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10off campusBy Rachel mortonSky’s the Limit with NASA InternshipHannah Bower ’10 is looking for life on other planets. She’s not adreamer or a science fiction fan, she’s a scientist and she’s in aposition to discover them while working at NASA.When the rover craft, Curiosity, lands on Mars thisAugust, it will be relaying data back to NASA, data thatwill be analyzed using some of the techniques Hannahhas been testing. A sophomore at George WashingtonUniversity, Hannah landed the very competitive Tateinternship last summer to join a research group in thePlanetary Environment Lab at NASA. The scientiststhere were trying to refine techniques that would enablethem to find and quantify “organics” that were obtainedduring expeditions to Mars.“An organic compound is anything that containscarbon,” explains Hannah. “And carbon is essential forlife. So what we are looking for are any signatures oflife on Mars.”That is the “science for English majors” explanation.Here’s Hannah’s excited, full-speed, breathless explanationof what they are really doing: “We put knownconcentrations of water with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbonsthrough a system where we collect organics andrun them through a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.Then we compare it to a standard.”Hannah was already back at NASA one day a weekduring the school year, and will work there full timethis summer. Her new project is closely related to thissearch for organics on Mars, but this summer she’s tryingto find organics in deep cores of ice from the Arctic.Scientists believe that this glacial ice is similar to icefound on Mars and will provide a standard to whichdata from the Mars rover will be compared.Having a hand in such active, planetary research issomething most college students don’t have access to.Hannah is utterly jazzed by the science, the people sheworks with (“I’m so happy I have the mentors I have.They are absolutely awesome!”), and the opportunityto do science that has such an impact.“I used to think I’d go to medical school,” she said.“But now I really want to go to grad school and continuethis kind of work. I love planetary sciences!”This happy marriage of student and science beganat Emma, says Hannah’s mother, Ann Crotty ’83, whoknows firsthand how that can happen. It happened forher as well when she was a student at Emma. Thoughshe, too, liked science and math, she initially took adifferent path and became an elementary teacher.“I stumbled into science as a first-year, fifth-gradeteacher in an urban magnet school for math, science,and technology,” she says. “I ended up pursing a graduatedegree focused on science and education.” Herdoctoral dissertation was on women and girls in scienceeducation and it was fascinating seeing her own daughtertraveling this route.“I watched Hannah’s interest and excitementabout science gradually take shape in high school atEmma. As a parent and educator, I saw her interestpeaking during her sophomore year when she tookher first chemistry course. It may not have been her‘ah ha’ moment, but I recollect it was my ‘ah ha’moment for her.”Hannah Bower ’10 and her mother Ann Crotty ’83 bothdeveloped a love of science while at Emma Willard.emma
11off campusTrue, Ann had primed the pump. When her daughterswere young (another daughter, Sarah, a senior atEmma, is heading for Hobart William Smith Collegenext year to study life sciences), she’d point out metamorphicrock during walks on trails, take them to seean Imax movie on Jane Goodall, and plant seedlingswith them in the back yard. She made sure her daughtersknew women who were active practitioners inscience-related fields—doctors, mathematicians, engineers.“I always found a teaching moment,” says Ann,“whether they embraced it or not. Oftentimes not!”Hannah remembers those teaching moments. “Mywhole life I’ve been surrounded by science. We’d havelittle critters around; my mother would do experimentswith us. She wanted me to go to Emma because theyhave a good science program.”By the time Hannah graduated from Emma Willard,she had taken six years of science, including Physics,Chemistry, Biology, Animal Behavior, Ethics in Science,and Neuroscience, as well as four years of mathematics.Her most formative science experience came duringher junior year when she had an eight-week internshipat Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in their biotechnologylab. Hannah says this was certainly the item on herresume that got her noticed by NASA when she was oneof many applicants for the internship there.“To me it was like a rehearsal for her future,” saidAnn about her daughter’s internship while at Emma.“She got to see how scientists work together and doscience, and to see herself in science, too.”It was particularly satisfying to Ann to watchHannah’s love of science grow and build into a careerpath because Ann’s experience as an educator had shownher that women and minorities are underrepresented inmany science fields.“The STEM pipeline is referred to as ‘leaky,’” she says,using the acronym often used for Science, Technology,Engineering, and Mathematics. The attrition rates ofwomen and minorities are especially high.But for girls inclined toward science at EmmaWillard, Ann feels the environment is conducive.“She got to see how scientistswork together, and to seeherself in science, too.”“I think there is a much more concerted effort at Emmaover the last decade or so to provide valuable and variedopportunities for students to gain access to science andmathematics courses that not only build their foundationalknowledge, but lead to more advanced coursesas they move from grades 9 to 12.”She cites the physics course for first-year students atEmma, noting that most schools offer physics to upperclassstudents only and often with prerequisites that barmany students who are not already confident sciencestudents. “This is a statement about the importance ofscience. How do you know you don’t like physics ifyou have never been exposed to it?” asks Ann.“Think of all the untapped potential in studentswho have never taken a physics or a chemistrycourse in high school—they could be, or couldhave been, our future engineers, physicists, chemists,bioengineers, biochemists.”No such questions linger for Hannah Bower,future planetary scientist. Next year she is transferringto the University of Maryland because, she says, “theirchemistry program is one of the top-ranked in the countryand they have close ties with NASA.” And NASAis where Hannah hopes to work, once she completes agraduate degree.“It was awesome to see my own daughter navigatingher way…gaining ground toward making such animportant commitment and decision about her future,”says Ann. “I describe her NASA experience as ‘life altering’because it did change her life. It has opened somany pathways, inspired her to take greater leaps. Shecan see a career with a future.” Summer 2012
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