“This year marks 40 years of our successful partnership with the Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minority Engineers,” said Heather Laychak, Aerospace’s vice president and chief people officer. “Last year we introduced the Brooke Owens Fellowship Program and look forward to supporting this program for years to come.”

Laychak added, “We’re also excited to share that we’ve expanded our portfolio of premiere fellowship programs and welcome our inaugural class of fellows from the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program. It’s an honor to help prepare the next generation of talent that will serve our space enterprise.”

Five fellows were selected from The Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minority Engineers (GEM): Lucero Buendia, University of Texas, El Paso, Texas; Gerardo Arevalo, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.; Cassidy Feltenberger, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif.; Cadence Payne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; and Jean Luis Suazo Betancourt, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.

In addition, two Brooke Owens Fellows are Julia Mihaylov, from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Ariz.; and Anna Voelker from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. One fellow from the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program, Shayna Hume, is from the University of Miami, Miami, Fla.

The Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minority Engineers (GEM) was founded in 1976 at the University of Notre Dame. More than 3,200 researchers, professors, entrepreneurs, inventors, and business leaders have earned their degrees — including over 200 who have earned doctorates in the physical sciences, life sciences, and engineering. GEM’s mission is to enhance the value of the nation’s human capital by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups (African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans) at the master’s and doctoral levels in engineering and science.

The Brooke Owens Fellowship Program — an award-winning, volunteer-led program awarding internships and senior mentorship to exceptional undergraduate women seeking careers in aviation or space exploration — and announced 41 young leaders as recipients of 2018 Brooke Owens Fellowships. After completing a rigorous and highly competitive application and multi-phase interview process, each Fellow was placed into a paid summer internship at one of the nation’s leading aviation or space companies.

The Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program connects exceptional current college juniors, seniors, and graduate students with paid, summer internships in the exciting field of commercial spaceflight, as well as with notable aerospace leaders for mentorship. This is the first year of the program with 24 stand-out individuals selected for the 2018 Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship program. Upon completing the summer internship, the Fellows will remain among an elite group of alumni who will have the opportunity to continue to network with this program, their Fellow peers, assigned mentors, and future Fellows, on the path to becoming future space icons. The program, patterned closely on the prestigious Brooke Owens Fellowship Program, uses much of the same model to select and train future leaders but expands the eligibility requirements to include both men and women and to focus on graduate students.