NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

What's a common way to minimize the difficulty of a problem? Many people use this disclaimer: "It isn't rocket science, after all." Carly Donahue can take great pride in telling people about her summer internship work with NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Program. It really was rocket science!

Image to left: While a USRP intern for NASA, Carly Donahue visited Mission Control. Credit: NASA

During the summers of 2004 and 2005, Donahue worked as a USRP intern at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Working with NASA sounds appealing to her now, but when she was in high school, such a choice hadn't really occurred to her.

"In high school, I was an above-average student, but nothing exceptional," said Donahue. "I was good at math, and interested in biology and epidemiology. It was only later that I switched my areas of study to math and physics, and started thinking about what I was going to actually do with my education. USRP helped me see the value of working hard and focusing. I saw that using your skills was different than just taking tests and following the program at school. Working in a real-world environment made it all real."

Related Resources + NASA Undergraduate Student Research Program

USRP is an internship program developed for undergraduate students wishing to enhance their curriculum in selected fields of study that complement NASA's objectives. The program is managed by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium and involves all of the NASA field centers, the NASA White Sands Test Facility, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Students have a choice of a 10-week summer session or a 15-week fall session. Students receive a stipend of $5,000 for the summer or $7,500 for the fall research experience. At the completion of the research session, students must submit a paper on their NASA-USRP research experience. Students may also be asked to discuss their research in public forums or participate in NASA-sponsored workshops and technology demonstrations.

Both summers, while on break from her studies at Berry College in Rome, Ga., Donahue worked at KSC in the Applied Physics Lab. Her internship involved real work, a far cry from the stereotypical making-coffee scenario of Hollywood-portrayed interns.

What was it really like? Donahue shares highlights of her experiences.

Image to left: As a result of her USRP work, Carly Donahue was sent to Japan to present her research. Credit: NASA

"My internship benefited me tremendously," Donahue said. "The first summer I performed computational research concerning the distribution of forces in a granular packing. The research that I did was published in 'Physical Review Letters,' one of the top physics journals. The second summer I performed experimental research into the scaling laws of rocket exhaust cratering. I received NASA's board action award for the methods used in the research. In October 2005, NASA funded me to go to Fukuoka, Japan, to present my research in a poster session at the International Astronautical Congress. More recently, my research lab at NASA funded me to present my research at a NASA Workshop in Granular Materials in lunar and Martian exploration.

"Not only has my experience looked outstanding on my resume, it has allowed me to participate in current research," Donahue continued. "Lucky for me, I enjoyed the research that I did and decided to pursue granular physics research in graduate school. I have also had the opportunity to interact with many professionals in the field. It is a nerve-racking thing for many people to talk to people of such knowledge, and I have been given the opportunity to become comfortable and confident in those situations. I believe that I dedicate even more of myself to my schoolwork because I realize how much it will impact my future career. While I know that I did good work while I was at Kennedy Space Center, I also now know how much more I do need to learn."

Maggie Griffin/NASA Educational Technology Services