Shea Ferring

Ever since I was about 5, I wanted to be a pilot, and eventually a fighter pilot. When I was in high school, I was told that since I did not have perfect vision, that I would not be selected to fly the F-16 or A-10 which was my dream. At the same time, while in high school, we didn’t have a robotics team, so the best team/technical training I found was being part of the theater group where we worked together to put on plays for the school. This was great for me because without a goal of being a pilot, I did not have much interest in school. This experience, though not related to engineering, gave me a beginning technical understanding of working together with lights, sound and set building. I finished my senior year as stage manager for Grease which was my first leadership experience. I then went to college not exactly knowing what I wanted to do, and though I went into study business, it was not something that actually excited me. I then heard of a student satellite program where undergraduate students were building a robot to actually launch into orbit. I didn’t know anything about building satellites, but after changing my major to Aerospace Engineering and working on the team for 5 years through grad school, I was running the team preparing the satellite for launch and starting up the follow-on program. I graduated with job offers from NASA JPL, Motorola Teledesic and Honeywell Satellite Systems. . I still did not learn about FIRST until about 4 years out of school, but after my first year helping out team 233 at Kennedy Space Center (2003), I was hooked. I realized that is was the perfect opportunity to have some fun, learn some more technical skills, and most importantly give students the opportunities that I had growing up. As an engineer, I feel I have an obligation to help build the younger generation into star engineers and scientist, and overall productive members of society. My goal now is to train students to learn to think for themselves, be responsible for their future, and learn the power of a team! I have been working hard to ensure that they have a clear path through college with internship opportunities at Orbital, and eventually the skills and contacts to make their own future. Overall FIRST is a great tool to fill the hole that exists in the education system.