Women In Aviation

What a treat it was to get to attend the 25th annual Women in Aviation Conference at Disney in Orlando. This conference is always an amazing gathering of so many fantastic women! I am honored to have been part of it!

The first time I ever got to attend the Women in Aviation conference, it was as a result of a scholarship. I'm pretty sure the year was 2002 and it was in Reno. Since that initial conference I have been to 2 others before this one. I hope to make it a more regular occurrence to attend!

This year I feel fortunate that I not only got to attend the conference, but I also had the opportunity to exhibit and tell so many great people about Higher Orbits & ISSET and that I got to spread the good word about Mission Discovery!

Since I have been fortunate that throughout my life there have been people (individuals and companies) kind enough to offer scholarships to various things that I was interested in and wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise, I was extremely happy to be able to offer a scholarship to any Mission Discovery through the Women in Aviation Scholarship program.

At the conference we got the idea to solicit donations $1 at a time (because that's the kind of grass roots effort we are!) to fund a scholarship for a woman (of high school or university/college age) to attend any Mission Discovery. The idea was for this scholarship to be funded solely on the kind donations of the Women in Aviation Conference attendees. Unfortunately we got the idea a little late so while some individuals were happy to donate more than the $1 requested, we only made it halfway to our goal of $500 (which is a full scholarship).... here's where you might come in :) Did you attend the conference and not get a chance to stop by and make a donation? Well here's your chance!! Help us reach our goal of funding 1 woman who is interested in STEM to attend Mission Discovery based on the kindness of donations from WAI Conference attendees. Every dollar counts! You can make your check out to Mission Discovery and mail it to

Mission Discovery 

Attn: Michelle Ham 

32 Upshur Rd 

Annapolis, MD 21402

Make sure to put WAI in the notes section so we know to be sure to apply it to this special scholarship specifically.

Thank you so much for your support!!

Announcing Our First Scholarship Winners

One of the big reasons that I wanted to create Higher Orbits was to be able to offer opportunities for students to attend programs that they might not otherwise be able to attend. One of the obvious ways to do this is through scholarships. Clearly Mission Discovery is a program that I am incredibly vested in and believe in whole-heartedly. I wish something like Mission Discovery had existed when I was a student because it truly is a life changing experience for many students. I am so thrilled to be able to pour my energy into such a worthwhile endeavor. (Just how crazy has life been in working on Mission Discovery lately? Well I can tell you that all is going great but the answer to what all I've been up to in working on it is worthy of another blog all in and of itself!)

Our First Scholarships are all being awarded to students to attend the Valparaiso University Mission Discovery in July 2014.

http://isset.org/mission_discovery/upcoming/Valparaiso/

It is with great pleasure I announce the first winners of our first set of scholarships....


** Tara Marlow, from Indian Creek High School, has devleoped a love for the cosmos over the years and is considering becoming an astronautical engineer because, " I would have the opportunity to correlate my ideas with others and produce exceptional solutions to problems"

**Megan Mitchell, from Kankakee Valley High School, is passionate about space exploration for many reasons including that she believes it helps broaden our knowledge about the universe and creates new advances in technology. Exploring a career in aerospace has been a goal of hers since she was a little girl

**Emily O'Fallon, from Roncalli High School in Wisconsin, has always loved "new" things and has found a passion about space and hoes to pursue an education in astrophysics. She joined the rocketry team and while she loved building the rocket, launch was really what hooked her!

** We have 2 more winners but I have not heard back from them yet and do not want to publish their names without permission... I will tell you more about them when I hear back from them.

How about a big round of applause for all these amazing young minds!


I really look forward to all of these students joining us at Mission Discovery in July. Don't you want to attend too? You can register today to insure your spot! Additionally there will be more scholarships posted in the not too distant future on the Higher Orbits website (which is about to actually about to start looking like a proper website thanks to the help of some friends I think!) - check out www.higherorbits.org and be sure to click on the Scholarships page/tab.

It's Not All "Glamorous" - But I Love It!

For those of you who don't know me well let me divulge something about myself... I am a very "tell it like it is" kind of person... sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes... well... not so much :) I do my best to temper it where I can.

The reason I tell you this little tidbit about myself is that I think it will explain this post a bit....

I could tell you that everything about what I do for Higher Orbits and my work with ISSET is all fun and glamorous... but that wouldn't be realistic....  I have people say to me very frequently things like "Oh how amazing that you get to travel to all these places and do all these cool things" or "You're So Lucky" or things like that. They're right it is amazing that I get to travel and do the things I do. And they are right that I am lucky to have been able to make a career out of my passion. But I also have to give you a little reality...

It's not ALL glamorous (the word I am choosing - if you have a better word than that fill that in)...

Here's how I have spent many hours the past day or so....

We have many postcards (that look absolutely amazing thanks to the guys at ISSET) for our events that I used for the AIAA Space Conference last month. However we've had some additions to some of our programs that I want to be sure to promote. Instead of printing new cards (that would be so wasteful of what we have) I went and bought labels that I could print the new info on and then affix it to the postcard. Of course it's never quite just that easy right? I also had to go through and cut each label in half and trip the edges too in order to make it fit.

These postcards are headed to the SEDS National Conference. We have a partnership with SEDS where they get credit for referrals to our programs. (Are you interested in a similar partnership with us? Let me know!) These postcards I am working on will go into the conference bags for each participant. I wanted to make sure that if someone signs up for a program as a result of SEDS that SEDS gets credit so I've added stickers to each postcard to remind them...

All that said - this may not be glamorous work but it's work that has to be done and at the end of the day I love what I do! So I'm happy to do this along with all the stuff that people consider to be the "glamorous" portions of my job....