Aprille Ericsson-Jackson, Ph.D.
Aerospace Engineer, NASA
The Importance of Minorities and Females in the Fields
of Mathematics, Science and Engineering
October 17, 2000

Aprille Ericsson-Jackson: There are only 86,400 seconds in a day and I am truly appreciative of you lending me your ear during those precious moments. Let me start off by summarizing my sentiments toward my past mentors with an anecdote told to me by Dr. Julian Earls, who is a Deputy Director at the NASA Lewis Center in Cleveland, Ohio. He said his father used to say if you see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, you know he had help getting there. With that said, let me thank my family, my friends, my colleagues, all of my mentors, and my students. And I would especially like to thank my ancestors for all of their help and inspiration in getting me here today. I would like to start off with an African Griot who once stated before telling the story of Sundiata Keita, the founder and ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa during the 1200’s. He once said, "I teach the Kings of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past." I think of the term Sankofa, which expresses the same thought very well. Do you know what Sankofa means? It’s a West African term that is generally interpreted as "we must go back and reclaim our past, so we can move forward, so we can understand why and how we came to be who we are today."

Whenever I feel unsure about my ability, about my future to succeed, I review the technological contributions of my ancestors, great women, or minority role models in history, like Apacia, born in Alexandria, Egypt in 370 A.D.. Apacia is the fist woman known to have participated in the academic community. She taught mathematics and philosophy in Alexandria and is credited with the authorship of several major treatises in geometry, algebra, and astronomy. She invented several tools -- an instrument for distilling water, an instrument to measure the specific gravity of water, an astrolab, and planesphere. Letters were written and simply addressed to ‘The Philosopher’ were delivered to her. She wrote, "reserve the right to think for event o think wrongly is better than to not think at all." Lots of times I think of the term, "a mind is a terrible thing to waste."

I feel compelled to mention another Egyptian. It’s a man but that’s okay. For all of us who don’t know Imhotep, let me introduce you to the superstar multi-genius, the architect of the step pyramid. Imhotep was born approximately 2750B.C. and he’s known for being the first documented multi-genius. He was an astronomer, a philosopher, a poet, and the first physician. Note that Hippocrates was not born until approximately 50 B.C. and he learned his skills from Imhotep 's anatomy research. Imhotep was quite a well-rounded person. Did this brother have it going on or what? He was so well-loved among the Egyptians they named him a diety and I’d like to refer to the quote by Imhotep. It is: "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we shall die."

As a person in today’s society you must be concerned with the chance your life might come to a screeching halt, so please remember to live life to its fullest because each moment is precious. Consider this: even if you live for 100 years, your moment in history is brief. A miniscule period when compared to the age of the earth, approximately 4.5 billion years old, or the total time of evolution for the universe, which is approximately 15 billion years. You must make a conscious decision to leave your positive mark on this world. You must remember that you represent your family, your community, the organizations and clubs we are members of, the University of Virginia, the state you live in, the United States of America, women and people from all over the world, and finally mankind or should I say womankind. As women and minorities we are constantly battling negative perceptions. A quote from Malcolm X says:

We must strive, you must strive to change perceptions and to do this we must start internally and then work outward. I am proof in the pudding. Every day I am changing perceptions. I have done my own reading, my research so that I can take pride in my ancestry, my roots, my African- Carribbean -Indian history. I must go out and get because no one is going to do that for me. If I am to be a trailblazer or a role model, so be it. I didn’t start out to be the first African-American female to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, the Aerospace Option from Howard University or at NASA Goddard Space flight Center, but I am proud to be and I try to represent well for all others that come behind me. Many times I have been called a rocket scientist, which is generally characterized as a geeky profession. Whatever! Recently I was called a sheek geek, which I prefer that title, but personally I mean being smart and committed to learning new things has had its rewards. I have been to the White House several times. I have been able to present my research and speak around the United States, Canada, Germany, and England and I’ve even attended a space shuttle launch. So remember that it’s okay to be an intelligent woman and one must work hard in the pursuit of new knowledge , for we must increase the number of women and minorities in fields like aerospace engineering.

Here are some sad statistics. Women represent 52% of the United States population, yet only 2.13% of the more than 540,000 non-pilot aviation jobs are held by women. 1.2% of civilian and commercial airline pilots are women. Less than three percent of aircraft engine mechanics are women. Seven percent of astronaut pilots are women, 25% of those for the NASA astronauts are women. Two percent of military pilots are women, and that’s the general source for our NASA astronauts and pilots. At 15% of engineering, less than half go into the engineering careers. 20% of those physical sciences. 25% of computer science degrees are awarded to women. And then last, one in ten information technology jobs are unfilled, and if this trend continues the shortfall in the information technology arena talent will grow to 1.6 million within 7 years. When I initially started in college, I was aware of only a few female role models in America, in particular, in aviation and aerospace engineering careers. As I entered my career I began to become more aware of the many women that had contributed to the growth of the aerospace industry.

Here are a few women who have made history through their contributions to aviation and aerospace. As many of you may know, Amelia Earhart was the first woman avaitor to make the transatlantic flight, to cross the Atlantic alone, and fly the Pacific. But she is most noted for her attempt to fly around the world. Bessie Coleman was the first African-American female or male awarded international pilots license from the Federal Aeronautique in France in 1921. And we should all know why she had to obtain it from France at that time in history. Katherine Cheung was the first woman of Chinese ancestry to earn a pilots license in 1931. Willa Brown was the first African-American female commercial pilot and woman officer in the Civil Air Patrol. She was instrumental in maintaining and starting the Tusckegee Air Program. Mercury 13. In 1961 13 women were secretly trained for the NASA Mercury Program as astronauts. Jerry Cobb and Wally Funk and Ray Walton went into phase two and Cobb and Funk completed phase three. It was actually stated that one of the women outscored John Glenn on their exams. Dr. Sally K. Ride, first American woman in space in 1983. Dr. Mae C. Jemison, first African-American female in space in 1987. Dr. Ellen Ochoa, first Hispanic female in space in 1993. And then, Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Collins, first woman pilot in 1995, first commander of space mission in 1999. And somehow I was lucky enough to meet her during a visit to the White House, an announcement of her commanding that space shuttle mission last summer. I was even fortunate enough to be present during her launch of her history-making space shuttle mission. Now do these women have it going on or what? I say you go girl.

Let me mention Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, who was born in Washington, D.C. in 1946. She received her Bachelors in Science for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 and her Ph.D. in physics in 1973. Shirley Jackson became the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in theoretical solid-state physics from MIT. Dr. Jackson has worked as a researcher in a variety of places, Firmy National Acceletatory Laboratory, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Aspen center for Physics, Bell Telephone Laboratories and is a Professor of Physics at Rutgers University. But Dr. Jackson is most noted for her appointment as Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which she assumed on May 2, 1995. And two years ago she became the President of the Renancia Polytech Institute in New York.

And then I don’t want to forget my personal friend and member of the National Technical Association, Katherine Johnson. She started working at the NASA Langley Research Center with a group of other fellow teachers from West Virginia. They were brought onto NASA to help do the mathematical calculations for the Apollo Mission. Computers now do these calculations. She did such a great job that she ended up staying on when the other teachers went back to school to teach and she said, "She just loved to figure out the orbitive trajectories. She considered them a math puzzle that could be solved backwards in time. Johnson ended up working for NASA some 30 plus years. Who would have imagined that during the 19^th century a school teacher would help send men to the moon and a woman would commander a space shuttle mission? It’s been an extraordinary century for women. Now imagine the future.

Many of the people I have mentioned are devoted to the education of educating our youth, promoting technology in America, and being prepared for the 21^st century. My greatest challenge is climbing the ladder of success and pulling others behind me. I am truly dedicated to continuing my crusade. Programs like the Women 2000 exemplify these goals. These activities are so necessary in our communities today. We must continue to foster the awareness of women’s contributions to society and encourage, and I say, ‘no, we must demand our full participation in the policies and the decisions of our future America and this world.’ Also we must encourage international partnerships and relationships and learn to help someone outside of our usual network, reaching across racial and gender boundaries. In particular, we must reach out to the biggest population of undergraduate math and science underachievers — girls. It’s not that they are incapable; it’s just that they’ve been unwillingly discouraged from succeeding in these fields. Achievement test show through fifth grade that girls and boys scores are nearly identical. In the sixth grade however, girls’ math and science grades plummet. Middle school is a critical transition. Starting in the middle school grades, girls are less likely to take elective courses in math and science. This downward spiral is especially severe for girls of color, girls with disabilities, girls living in poverty, and girls who are learning English as a new language. Without the prerequisite math and science classes, it is impossible for women to pursue over30% of the college majors. After college math and science knowledge is crucial to a number of careers, especially at the management levels.

Frances Rosemont of National University has shown that on average starting salaries across all professions increase $2000 for every math class taken after ninth grade. Women aren’t the only ones being cheated. Our whole society is. The United States has become technically challenged. What do I mean by this? By the year 2000, 60% of the jobs required technical skills. There are currently 200,000 unfilled jobs in the computer industry alone. And by the year 2006, it is estimated that the computer field will generate more than a million new openings. The United States cannot afford to lose either more than half of its talent or the fresh perspective of women and minorities, which they can bring to such critical fields.

Realize that this is not an issue which spans our particular area, but it spans the globe. But of course, I’m particularly sensitive to our homefront. You, the students, must be able to achieve and learn under diverse conditions. You, the faculty and programming directors, are needed to help to light the way. We must all encourage our future, the students, especially girls and minorities, to continue to work hard at pursuit of new knowledge. You must strive forward towards springing towards learning math, science, and utilizing computers. These subjects are so exciting, you’ve got to put your mind to it and just do it.

If America is to move on in the technical arena, there are several things we must keep in mind. Our communities must take chances and attempt new roles and careers. We must get involved in science and technology, especially being part of the telecommunications and computer web. Otherwise, our communities are left out of the profits and access to the technology highway, a rich source of information. Again, remember without information, you are uninformed, therefore uneducated, and for some of us returning us to the slavery days or women’s suffrage period. We also must remember to remain diversified, multi-talented, and multi-disciplined. We must broaden our horizons so that we can meet the ever-changing needs of a working world. This world is constantly changing, and to stay abreast, one cannot be stagnant. Read, read, read and learn, learn, learn.

So often people have asked me, "How can we spend so much money in space when there are so many needs right here on Earth?" This allows me the opportunity to teach them about NASA technology spin-offs. At NASA we are doing incredible scientific research and we are making an investment in our future. The potential for science and medical discovery, the edge it gives our economy and how some projects are crucial for our nation’s security. Some of the technological spin-offs are the Gore-Tex fabric, which is used to design to prove the permeability of an astronaut’s space suit, it’s now used in our sweatsuits and to line our Timber land boots. Another example are Pyrex cooking pots, whose ability to withstand heat was derived from ceramic technology that provides space vehicles with heat protection during re-entry. Other NASA spin-off technologies are more protective eye lenses or pill-sized heart monitors.

Universities must also adopt the mindset of creating of creating products from the research they perform. This is no longer the day of creating equations and theoretical formulations. Everyone wants an end-product from their investments. We all must get with the program. While building your career and helping others build their’s, please keep in mind, whatever field you are in or whatever you decide to do, you must be aware of the impact your work will have on the earth. Too often people in the city show lack of concern for environmental issues, yet they are the ones most affected by them. Where do we place the power plants, refineries, or chemical plants? Is our water being properly cleaned? Do we recycle to help relieve dumping areas or do we create unsightly and unhealthy refuse areas? Environmental issues span all disciplines and ignorance is not an excuse, but part of the problem.

It makes me feel good to know that my work has real life implications. When I graduated from MIT, that was the year of the Shuttle disaster. All the jobs offered in aerospace engineering were for strategic defense. Ronald Reagan had this big theme that missiles would protect the United States, and that meant developing missiles. But it was important for me that the projects I worked on were not destructive. Let’s face it…men are more destructive. I care about the earth and you, the mothers and daughters of the earth, must take the responsibility to take care of it as well. My career at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center me to design satellites. I love the fact that my work has real life applications and I have been able to see my work put to good use. Now you are saying, "Okay, put to good use. How?" My work involves modeling and simulating the structural dynamics of the system and appendages like the solar rays or calculating the environmental effects on a spacecraft. I, the engineer, carry out a design as a vehicle that will carry laboratory instruments to space to collect data so that the majority of scientists can better understand the universe. At NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, the majority of the satellites we design and build are used to monitor the earth. For example, one of the missions I worked on was the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. (TRMM as we call it.) I think everyone here understands the importance of collecting information on rainfall. With the collected data on rainfall, we have observed the effects of El Nino and La Nina and correlated that activity with crop productivity and weather patterns. These are important environmental conditions that affect humans.

For me, remembering Sojourner Truth’s quote from her famous speech, "Ain’t I a Woman?" In 1851, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, she stated, "If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them." Women must take charge of their lives and their careers, which are being more intertwined. Women and minorities must unite together. We must mentor, nurture, and partner together. The outcome could be so wonderful. We must all stand up for what is right. For the minority or female there exists the possibility of social and cultural isolation on the job. It is for these persons accepting racism and sexism for promotion, or because of fear of losing job, which is almost inevitable anyway, that John F. Kennedy stated that, "Conformity is the gel of freedom and the enemy of growth." We have all had the responsibility to the environment to maintain it in a state where all occupants are comfortable. If it fails, the results may be catastrophic for some, while others may go on unharmed. But in an environment of racism and sexism, some people will actually thrive, while women and minorities are literally choked to death by the toxic environment enclosed by the glass ceiling. Remember that silence only encourages the tormenter.

I know I am probably preaching to the choir, but I am going to say it anyway. We must all work together across the boundaries of our skin color and gender. Women and minorities must continue to work together for us to remain technically competitive. Please realize that this journey we are transcending together to make a change in the workforce for better is like climbing a mountain that never ends. A quote from the book, The Greatest Salesman in the World, reads, "The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning. And it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal."

I want you to apply this to your own dreams, your own goals, and remember that it’s like climbing a mountain that never ends. This world is constantly changing and to stay abreast one cannot be stagnant. Each grade scale you climb or whichever degree and awards you seek, are just plateaus of accomplishment in your ever-constant struggle to succeed at life. It has been an extraordinary century for women, but we must work hard to maintain a positive perspective for the next century. So let’s pump it up and I want everyone to repeat after me, "I will persist until I succeed." [Audience repeats phrase] Like I said, let’s pump it up. Now that was weak. Okay, let’s try again. "I will persist until I succeed." [Audience repeats phrase louder]

I would like to end with this thought. Imagine this: there is a bank which credits your account every morning $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. It allows you to keep no cash balance and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day. What would you do with it? I would draw out every cent. Well everyone has such a bank. Its name is time and every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off as a loss whatever amount you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens up a new account for you. Each night it burns the records of the day. If you fail to use the days deposits, the loss is your’s. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow. You must live on today’s presence on today’s deposits. So I say, invest in it so as to get the most from it. The most in health, happiness, and the warm feeling derived from helping others to be the best that they can be. The latter is the ultimate reward because success in giving than in the receiving. I believe in giving back to the communities, but you are role models, an example of beauty, intelligence, and youthfullness. So I say please pass your knowledge on. Someone gave it to you and it is your turn to impart that knowledge to someone else. Remember the clock is running and I say there are about maybe 40,000 seconds left in today. So please make the most of today and every day. Shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you will still be amongst the stars. Peace.

Now I understand there are some engineering students here and so I am going to show you guys briefly too the missions that I’ve worked on or researched at Howard. This is some of the research. Large Space Structures, the structural dynamics and the flexibility. As you can imagine, this is practically the size of a football field and you’ve got these long truss structures that become very flexible and vibrational. Well I was able to use that research that I had learned from applying control methods to the structural vibrations and apply them to the work that I do at Goddard.

I am not going to go back to the picture of the spacecraft TRMM. Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission has really long solar rays. It has these solar rays that hang off really thin booms. We call them booms and they are very thin and very flexible. So as a result you end up having a lot of vibrational effects on a very small space craft and this affects the data that we can collect. And that was what I initially started to do when I first came to Goddard, was looking at those structural vibrations, how we can control them, will they affect the orbiting of the spacecraft. And then later I began to do things discussing more the environmental effects that may happent o a spacecraft.

This is the mission that I’ve worked on the longest. I have worked on this approximately three years. I’ve worked on a couple of others but this one has kind of been my pet because I have done so many different things for it. If you see the white trace kind of line, that’s supposed to be the satellite’s orbit trajectory. It’s going to travel 1.5 million kilometers away to Legrange point. For anybody that’s physics, they might know but this is a point of gravitational equilibrium in space, where the gravitational pull between the moon, the sun, and the Earth are at equilibrium. Now you guys, if you remember way back when you learned about gravitational fields of a body it’s associated with the mass of a planet. So the smaller the planet, the less the gravitational field. At some point in space, you can actually find there are seven different points with this gravitational pull between bodies are in equilibrium in our solar system. Well we actually go to this point and park there and how we get there is we have what we call the orbits that are going around the earth. There are three different phasing loops and we actually burn our thrusters and change that trajectory so that’s why the loops are not right on top of each other, because they slightly change with the burning of thrusters. And the yellow trace, that orbit you see is the moon. Well at some point that moon comes by while we are coming by and we use the gravitational pull of the moon to do a gravitational cyst, which saves some fuel. We can actually swing out, we can do what they can a lunar swing-by, and we use this gravitational cyst to swing out and to begin our trajectory out to this L2 point. Now one of the things I began to do, one of the new things I learned was how to create an algorithm that would tell you how we would burn the thrusters and change this trajectory and work with orbital navigation people to begin to talk about the physics and the thrusting and all that. I actually created the algorithm for how you burn these thrusters during those periods. You also have to do orbital correction and that’s another thing that I began to do. And then the environmental effects and there are lots of environmental effects close to the earth. There are aerodynamic drag, which most of us can remember when you put your hand out the car window and you kind of get your hand pushed back. Well you experience that on a spacecraft as well. You have solar pressure and I’ll talk about that in a minute, and you have the gravitational effects. Well solar pressure…you see this pattern. This thing here is actually solar rays. It has two-fold activity going on. Solar rays collect the suns energy and convert it to energy . As I tell the kids, you can’t have an extremely long extension cord via satellite, right. But as a result we are able to generate some electrical power. But in addition that means that we’ve got a lot of heat generated because the sun is beating down on the spacecraft. This particular spacecraft is actually collecting information about temperature and it’s using a microwave instrument. The hope is that if we get the correct information, we can understand something like evolution of the universe and the Big Bang Theory, and that was a huge explosion so you could have this temperature generated. Well the instrument cannot be exposed to the sun because that would corrupt the data and once it’s exposed to the sun it takes three to six months to cool down, so that affects our ability to collect data over a long period of time. We hope to have four scan patterns. The mission duration should be two years. It actually will probably be a lot longer than that but that’s what you set as an objective so you can get four scan patterns. And they kind of look like a kaleidoscope design. What’s happening is this spacecraft is rotating like this but then it’s also doing this and so the pattern that the instrument is able to take of the sky takes about six months to actually complete its cycle.

So that’s my job. As an astronaut we do what we call attitude control. And tell the kids not attitude like I got an attitude, okay. It’s position and location and orientation in space and so basically I am the engineer that makes sure that we can maintain the positioning and location while we are doing the mission. And that’s what I do in a nutshell.