North Oconee High School Student Gets Hands-On Experience At NASA

While her peers spent their summers relaxing at neighborhood pools, rising North Oconee High School senior Morgan Kemmerlin spent part of hers at the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility as an intern.

“My favorite part was listening to Ed Gonzales who used to work in mission control,” Kemmerlin said. “He actually took us to historic mission control which is the first mission control ever where they had the Apollo mission. We got to sit in there—I sat in the flight director’s chair because I thought it was really cool. It was really exciting. It was definitely one of the best parts of the experience.”

Kemmerlin was one of ninety girls selected for the Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars summer program. It included an eight-module online course, which she completed during the school year, and a week-long internship at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

“The top 30 percent—because we were graded—were invited to the space center,” she said.

During the internship, Kemmerlin attended lectures and participated in a hands-on group project building Lego robotics.  Participating in the program, she said, helped to solidify her passion for engineering.

“This internship was great because I thought beforehand that I wanted to do astrophysics and the internship completely changed it because I met all these engineers and I was really inspired to do engineering because I want to be able to do things instead of at a computer,” Kemmerlin explained. “I want to be able to see what I’m working on. It completely changed what I thought I was going to do.”

After graduation, she plans on attending the Georgia Institute of Technology and majoring in aerospace engineering.  During her collegiate career, Kemmerlin hopes to participate in NASA’s Cooperative Education Program.

“During my time at Tech, I’d really like to do NASA’s Co-op program because that the only way they hire nowadays,” she said. “I’d also like to look into some private companies, maybe in France because I’ve always really liked France and Toulouse is the space center in France. So that’s the plan. The plan is to become an aerospace engineer.”