Interview: Meg Tuma, Scientist and Mentor


In the course of doing my job, I frequently get to work with a lot of very smart people, among them Margaret L. (Meg) Tuma, Ph.D., one of the engineers ("rocket scientists") at Marshall Space Flight Center.


What do you do at Marshall Space Flight Center?
I’m the project lead for the Ares I Integrated Vehicle Ground Vibration Test. That’s a mouthful – and means I’m responsible for the modal test on the new Ares rocket. We need to understand the natural frequencies and damping of the Ares V vehicle in order to adequately control the vehicle during ascent and flight. My responsibilities include getting the test rocket hardware from each of the rocket component elements (First Stage, Upper Stage, Upper Stage Engine, and Orion), coordinating transportation to MSFC and the Test Stand, getting the Test Stand (4550) ready for testing, the hydrodynamic stands (ie big shock absorbers), stacking the hardware, conducting the test, and disassembling the vehicle.




What degrees do you have? B.S. Physics, M.S. Physics, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering
Did you pursue these degrees with space in mind? Always in the back of my mind, but not my ultimate goal. I really didn’t think I had a chance to work at NASA, so when I got the opportunity, I jumped on it!


When did you know you wanted to work in a scientific or technical field?
In high school. I always liked math and science and in high school was challenged in physics and calculus and realized that’s what I wanted to pursue in college.


How did you make the switch from research to management?
I was in the NASA Professional Development program in 2000-2001. During that year, I worked at JPL, a University, and HQ. These experiences broadened my horizons and made me realize my talents would be put to better use if I shifted from research into project management. It was a fairly smooth transition. Although, I miss research from time to time. I still work on one of my inventions in my “spare” time. It’s a miniature light bulb (aka a “light bulb on a chip”) that can be used as a calibration source for spectrometers on satellites or remote terrestrial applications.



What's the biggest difference between science and engineering?
Engineering is much more applied. Science is a broader field trying to understand nature at its core (forces, electricity, etc.) Engineering takes science and applies it to make things work.



What advice would you give to young women interested in pursuing STEM careers?
Study study study! In groups if you can find a good study group. Take an internship or summer job in the field you are pursuing to “test drive” it. It’s much easier to change a major to match the career you’re interested in. Get a mentor. This is really important. There are several mentoring programs. One is MentorNet – an online mentoring program.



You participate in a mentoring program through the University of Akron. What can you tell me about that experience?
It’s wonderful! Each year I’m paired with one or more students and meet with them in person monthly usually at a social event (bowling, touring a museum, etc) and via email on a weekly basis. In fact, I’m still in contact with students I mentored 10 years ago! I was able to help them with class choices, provide career advice, and just listen to their problems when they needed to talk. I like helping others so I find it very fulfilling. I’m also a charter member of MentorNet – an online mentoring program where I’m paired with a graduate student in the US and we communicate via email a few times a month. My current mentee is in California and had a side project working on research for microwave popcorn. It was very interesting. I’m also involved in the “Adopt-A-Physicist” program. Twice a year I get paired with 2 or more high school classes from across the US and communicate via email. They ask lots of questions! Like, what made me decide to go into my current career, my favorite class, most interesting work experience, toughest work experience, etc. I was mentoring 3 classes during the Ares I-X launch, and they were tracking the progress and stopped their school work to watch the launch. It was neat to share that excitement with so many young students.



In addition to technical knowledge, what skills have you found the most valuable in your career?
People skills! It is so important to understand how to manage a team and understand your team’s personal dynamics.



What's been the coolest moment in your career so far?
Ares I-X launch. Followed by aero flight tests. And riding in the vomit comet.


Where do you go from here?
The moon! Still trying to be an astronaut. Hopefully we’ll have a replacement vehicle for the shuttle to take us there.

Thoughts on Dachau

The following is an edit of some of my thoughts after my visit to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, outside Munich.

Cruelty sanctioned by the state is that much more horrific because there's no one to appeal to short of another state (assuming they care) or God. And what if Hitler had won the war, and the evil had gone on and on?

"Picture a boot, stamping on a human face, forever."
--George Orwell, 1984

The evil didn't stop with mere physical abuse. Humiliation and degradation go hand and hand with the operation. Bodies are meagerly clothed in institutional striped uniforms; heads are shaved, gold fillings removed; the people are underfed and then made to work as slaves. More beatings for poor work or slacking off or passing out from exhaustion. Survival is obtained through favors or kowtowing or luck or a raw, relentless will to live.

But all those qualities need not matter. Illness might come, or injury. Lacking a healthy immune system, positive attitude, or adequate medical care, one might go from the infirmary to the firing squad or the gas chamber. Naked, bewildered, disbelieving to the end that their own countrymen (or any men) would do such a thing, they nevertheless walked into rooms made to look like showers, and from those shower heads came a particularly nasty pesticide, Zyklon B. People would push and claw their way toward the door to escape. Those not crushed succumbed to the gas.

The horror didn't end for some. The chambers had to be emptied and cleaned, which meant some prisoners--tattooed on their arms, like the dead--were ordered to remove the bodies and then bury them or throw the bodies into industrial ovens.

Every day like this for six years or more. Some deny it happened, and some just wish it would. How dare they? How dare anyone?

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The camps required a wicked mutation of science and engineering. Someone had to develop Zyklon B. Someone had to experiment to determine the right concentration of the gas to kill X number of people. Someone had to determine how long it would take to kill the occupants and how long it would take the gas to dissipate before reopening the chamber. Others had to make the poison. Others built the chambers. Others had to determine where they would be placed in the camps and how to handle the rounding up of prisoners. And someone had to write everything down--the orders and procedures.

Human minds did this, calmly, rationally, methodically. Every step of the way there were men who did the work, signed off on it, and moved the horrid mechanisms down the next step in the chain. So what if you loved your country? So what if you hated your enemies? Was engineering death at such a personal level worth it?

I make no claims to purity of intention, that I could somehow have been "the good German." That step in the process where I mention writing down the processes? That would've been the technical writers of the day. One of my grad school professors included a section in his book on technical communication ethics on procedures written for a mobile gas chamber the Nazis tried to develop. The person who had to write that stuff--what kind of nightmares did he have? But he did the work anyway.

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And the question still comes back: how does a person or a party manage to twist a nation's conscience so? "Nazi" is thrown around as an epithet today as if every political enemy were automatically as evil as Hitler, probably because Hitler did not start with big things off the bat. He started small. And human nature is not that different across distances of time or nationality. It can start with not liking a particular already-unpopular group of people. You don't say anything because, while you don't exactly hate that group, you don't exactly like them, either. And if, say, the government started targeting that group for extra taxes, punishing fines, or hostile treatment, well, you're likely to shut up because you don't have a dog in that fight. The day might even come when you personally benefit from the government's campaign--they take property and possessions from the unpopular group and give it to you. You are now in the government's pocket, as they well know. You've accepted their moral premise, and you've profited from their (and your) moral lapse. How can you speak against the government now? And when your country goes to war with someone else, welll, you're all the more likely to volunteer to fight and fight hard, because you don't want to be on the losing side. After all, you know what you did. And if you get letters from your wife that the people in X group have disappeared and there are rumors of death camps, that's just wild speculation, enemy propaganda...but you can't help wondering how true it is. After all, you know what you did.

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But all these attitudes still have to come from somewhere. A people's moral and ethical compass isn't lost all at once. That compass is directed by religion and philosophy. Drop religion, as so much of Western Civilization has done, and you're left only with philosophy, and the 20th century produced some of the nastiest schools of thought in human history. The beliefs of these schools include beliefs that:

• The state is more important than you.
• It's better to remain silent and keep your place than stand up for a fellow human being and be forced out of it.
• The use of force is okay as long as you're not on the receiving end of it.
• Everything the state tells you about a particular group is the truth and commands your obedience when that state orders you to kill.
• God does not exist, so you must get what you can out of this life; protect yourself, your family, and your possessions with every bit of strength you can muster...or entrust them all to the state or a leader for protection.
• Everything the state tells you is a lie, and only self-appointed demagogues can clear away the corruption and indecision of mere elected leaders.
• Your own security is worth protecting at any cost.
• The state's security is worth protecting at any cost.
• A powerful, charismatic leader is worth trusting to any end if you believe his cause is just.

Dachau is a stain on all of us, not just the Germans or Western Civilization, but upon all human beings. Philosophy led the way, science and technology merely cleared the path.

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What got to me were the damned ovens. It's one thing to hear about them or read about them, or even just see a picture; it's another thing to be there in the room with them, or to walk through the gas chambers and realize that the things actually existed. In fact, what bothered me the most was how clean everything at Dachau was...almost as if they could open for business at any moment.

A couple on my tour had visited a village in France called Oradour-sur-Glane. There, in June 1944, four days after D-Day, soldiers of the 2nd Waffen-SS Division Das Reich rounded up over 600 French citizens and massacred them. General Charles de Gaulle, after visiting the site, ordered the bodies buried, but the town to be left as it was...as a reminder. Oradour-sur-Glane was not on my tour, but I'd be tempted to go there at some point. Seeing things as they were, even after 60+ years of time had worn things away, seems to bring home the point better than this spruced-up museum place at Dachau. It's just too clean to be believed or even, really, accepted.

Below are some other pictures I took during my brief time there. The compound is massive when walking it on your own, but small when you consider how many people they crammed in there at one time. The administration, prison buildings, walls, and guard towers are mostly intact--in fact, the U.S. Army kept prisoners in the prison building up through the mid 1950s. The barracks have been torn down, with two reconstructions built. There were 30 long shacks in all, the outline of each depicted by concrete perimeters (the original foundations?). A long row of poplar trees fills the aisle between the two rows of buildings...unlikely to be original. The prison building is now a museum, which includes maps, pictures, equipment from the camps, memorial stones and flowers sent by various cultural and military groups, and art inspired (if one can call it that) by the camps.

This piece is a little creepy, featuring as it does emaciated, burnt-looking corpses. In fact, corpses, barbed wire, and madness are prominent in all the visual representations found at the camp, including at some of the religious sites.

The uniform worn by prisoners.










One of the pictures from the museum. No apologies for the horrific nature of it. That is why we visit these places--so we don't forget.









Another image from the museum, this one drawn by one of the prisoners, shows the beating of one of the prisoners by several guards. Again, this was done by agents of the government, acting under the express command of the highest levels of leadership.










The camp has several religious buildings attached to it, including a Jewish shrine, a Catholic shrine, a "Reformed Christian" church, a Catholic nunnery, and an Eastern Orthodox chapel. There was a service occurring at the latter when I arrived, but out of respect I didn't take any pictures.

The gateway to the Jewish temple. Note the spikes.

Exterior of the Jewish temple/shrine. Visitors walk down a ramp to the interior, as if walking into the grave.

This is the Reformed Christian Church at Dachau. I don't understand the symbology, but there are half-crosses all around the building. Otherwise, the place seems to lack rational shape or symbol. Is that a message in itself?

Another terrifying piece of sculpture: distorted bodies pieces together in all directions like some barbed wire experiment gone horribly wrong.

One of several guard towers still in place.

"Arbeit macht frei," the motto at the gates of Dachau, Auschwitz, and all the other camps, I believe, means, "Work makes you free."

The smokestack from the damned ovens.

If those things were going as often as was estimated, there is no way the local people did not know. Expressions of denial were not sufficient for the American soldiers who saw these places, and rightly so. Everyone in Germany was--and is--required to visit one of the camps to rub their noses in it so they never forget. Good.

I confess, I came out of the camp wanting to bomb the country flat. But then I thought about it and realized that, no, living memory and constant reminders are absolutely necessary. How sick and unfortunate it is that human beings need such reminders. Not just the Germans, but all of us. But need them we do, to remind ourselves of what cruelty we are capable of...even bombing a country flat.

Citizen Engineers

As regular readers of this blog probably know (and I appreciate all 20 of you), I send a lot of links and occasional articles to Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader. Darlene has made it her personal mission to get more of our fellow citizens (she's based out of Philadelphia, that most American of places) interested and participating in science and science issues.

The problem with science is that it's not engineering. After doing some science writing at NASA, I discovered that I preferred engineering as a subject matter. I can do either, but engineering makes more sense to me because, while science is about understanding the unknown, engineering is about taking the known and using it for human purposes. Science often involves analogies and guesses and mistaken theories (phlogiston and human-induced global warming are my two favorites at the moment). You're never really certain you've got it right. Engineering, however, is a little more empirical and forgiving: "If I build X widget to Y tolerances/requirements, will it perform B function for C operating cycles?"

Another advantage engineering has over science is that it's been around a lot longer. Human beings have been doing engineering since the times of the of ancient Pyramids, but have really only performed science as a systematic practice for the last 200 years or so. A lot of engineering knowledge continues to pass from person to person, despite the existence of engineering and trade journals. I don't know if this is an advantage, but it seems to be a fact of life, as individual craftsmen pass on lessons learned the hard way ("You don't want to put too much shimming here, or the rocket will topple over"). Science appears to be much more formal and written down, with everything documented to ensure consistent results.

But the reason I like engineering writing better is simply because it's writing about human beings making changes in the real world. If a human being designed a machine, odds are halfway decent that another person will be able to understand what that machine is supposed to do. Not always, of course. We still don't know how the Egyptians built the Pyramids, nor do we fully understand how ancient humans learned how to make bronze or steel. These are puzzles for the engineering historian, perhaps.

In any case, while science has undoubtedly changed humanity's perceptions of the universe, engineering is the discipline that has allowed us to shape parts of our universe to allow us to survive and improve our standard of living. My interest lies there. So even if I don't have an engineering degree, I suppose as a technical writer I can lay claim to being a "citizen engineer," as Darlene colors herself a "citizen scientist." My "engineering," however, consists of sharing information about technical subjects--I'm still enough of a klutz to know that I probably shouldn't be turning wrenches...

More Email on Gen Y

From a reader:

I think that the crux of your skepticism is reflected in this comment: "Another issue I have ... is that they emphasize collaborative technological tools but do not specify how these tools will enable people to make fundamentally better contributions than they might make through, say, face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or memos."

To me, this is the real question. A co-research[er] and I are exploring this through case studies of innovations that owe a large portion of their development success to Web 2.0 collaborative tools, including social networking and virtual worlds. We've just begun this research and are still looking for cases, but we've already learned there does seem to be some validity to the claim that these tools can be beneficial. I hope to be able to report back in a few months with a few examples.

Steve Gordon (gordon@babson.edu)

Steve:

Thanks for reading and chiming in. Please know that it's not just me who is skeptical. I work and talk with many Boomers and Xers who belong to the "show me the money" faction in this discussion. Also, within NASA, it's not just about the electronic/communication collaboration. For a lot of folks it comes down to the hardware, the actual rockets that put astronauts into space. Marshall might be among the most conservative NASA centers from an engineering and cultural point of view, but they are not alone. Any engineering lead will need to be shown that online collaboration creates/created better rockets/spacecraft/widgets than empirically bending metal and turning wrenches on the shop floor.

I look forward to seeing the results of your research. Hard data is something that will very much "show me the money."

Science Education Online

I sent the following science links to my buddy Darlene, the Science Cheerleader, and she suggested that I make a posting that included them. Far be it for me to argue with a nice lady who sends me free stuff. I have added a few references for reasons explained below.

http://www.teachspace.us/
http://www.knowledgeadventure.com/school/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/missmass.html
http://www.whizkidsfoundation.org/
http://wtp.mit.edu/eecs/
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/home.html
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/directory/Sciences.htm
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/science/Science_Resources.htm

The point of these links was to provide some alternative sites for interested folks to find science education information online. The internet is awash in such resources. Such resources might become increasingly necessary (here's where I get on my personal soapbox) if more people home school their kids. And why would they home school? Because of the state of mathematics and science education our taxpayer-funded schools.

The future, whether we like it or not, will become ever more dependent upon automated, computerized electronic technologies, biological technologies, and robotic and nanotechnologies. All of these will require students who are literate in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. We are doing children no favors by de-stressing grades and emphasizing self-esteem and "creative math." Consider the following quotations from "A Nation at Risk," a report on the state of the U.S. educational system in 1983 (waaaay back in the Reagan era, when I was still in the throes of junior high), and contemplate the fact that the situation has not greatly improved:

Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.

What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge.

• International comparisons of student achievement, completed a decade ago, reveal that on 19 academic tests American students were never first or second and, in comparison with other industrialized nations, were last seven times.
• Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of everyday reading, writing, and comprehension.
• About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy among minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.
• Average achievement of high school students on most standardized tests is now lower than 26 years ago when Sputnik was launched.
• Over half the population of gifted students do not match their tested ability with comparable achievement in school.
• The College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) demonstrate a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980. Average verbal scores fell over 50 points and average mathematics scores dropped nearly 40 points.

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