Three years ago, mechanical engineering major Monique Embury, now a graduate student at WSU Vancouver, created the Aerospace club with hopes of bringing students who have a passion for research, design and building rockets, together.
Embury created the club so members could reach out to industry sponsors and obtain real world experience with projects instead of the typical classroom-based learning. Embury said support from their sponsors and WSU Vancouver is important to their club.
“At first it was just a very small club, there were only seven people in it. But now it has doubled in size which is fantastic,” Embury explained. “As a smaller university, a lot of people are very impressed with what we are able to accomplish and achieve with the support of our school and local companies.”
(Photo courtesy of WSU Vancouver’s Aerospace
Club)
With the club gaining more attention, sponsors like local steel and aluminium companies have donated finances and materials to help the Aerospace Club construct their rockets.
“It was really hard to gain momentum and then once local sponsors and our school started supporting us, it was absolutely amazing,” Embury said. “It was like ‘okay we can do this and we have a bunch of support that they want us to do this, they believe in us.’ That just helps us solidify how we feel about ourselves and this passion of ours.”
Spaceport America Cup
On Saturday, June 22, 2019, WSU Vancouver’s Aerospace Club shot their 93 pound high-powered rocket into the sky at the annual Spaceport America Cup competition.
Hosted by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, the Spaceport America Cup is an international competition that occurs once a year. Embury explained teams from all over the globe come to participate and be scored in a series of categories: altitude, technical reports, design, flight performance, etc.
Although the Aerospace Club did not place this year because of failure to recover their rocket after the launch, Embury expressed her gratitude for having the opportunity to attend and represent their team.
(Photo courtesy of WSU Vancouver’s Aerospace Club)
“We were just so extremely happy to have been able to go to the competition with the help from our school,” Embury said. “Being there [as a] smaller school and teams having 50 or more students on their team, and we had only eight to even attend the competition, that was fantastic.”
“As a smaller university, a lot of people are very impressed with what we are able to accomplish and achieve with the support of our school and local companies.”
– Monique Embury
Women in Stem
Embury also touched on how it feels being underrepresented as a woman within the STEM field and the challenges she had to face to get to where she is today.
“There’s multiple things to look at. It feels fantastic to be a minority in this field and be able to have as many accomplishments as I’ve had,” Embury explained. “I started off as the founder of this team and now I am the advisor and kind of overlooking everything. But it has definitely been hard, especially reaching out to different people in the industry that are older and not used to having women in the field … If you don’t have a strong personality and thick skin it can be really discouraging.”
Embury said the team plans on beginning next year with a clean slate, reaching out to sponsors and working on designs to improve their rockets. She said these things can hopefully launch them to place in next year’s competition.
Emily is a senior studying integrated strategic communication at WSU Vancouver.