EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A high school student from El Paso ISD’s Young Women’s STEAM Academy (YWA) took part in a virtual internship with NASA over the summer.
The NASA STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) summer internship is sponsored by NASA and the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research.
Catherine Cardenas,18, was one of 95 students across the country that were selected out of a pool of 3,000 applicants for the internship. Cardenas and the other selected students worked with NASA scientists and engineers on a five-week research project.
Cardenas, a senior, said she was grouped with nine other students to study the Urban Heat Island effect.
She described it as a phenomenon that occurs when a city experiences hotter temperatures than its surrounding rural areas because infrastructure such as roads and buildings absorb and retain more heat from sunlight than natural landscapes.
Through the remote internship, Cardenas and the other students were guided by their assigned NASA mentors to carry out the research through hands-on activities, field investigations, and science presentations.
Cardenas said the internship was an invaluable experience as she plans to pursue a college degree in mechanical engineering.
“It’s very different when you’re working with a group of people who are super duper intelligent, educated and smart, like very technically advanced. A lot of the main issues I found was with communication. That was something that I really had to adapt to — different communication styles and super high tech and scientific environments,” Cardenas said.
Cardenas said she never imagined she would be selected for the internship, let alone be pursuing a future in science. She said that when she first enrolled at the YWA in sixth grade, she was intent on pursuing the arts.
“I remember when I was in physics, I always had a thought that math was never going to be something that I could do. And then I took physics and I just fell in love with the concepts. It doesn’t mean I was any good at it, but I just realized that this could potentially be something that I could do,” Cardenas said. “This internship gave me a whole new plane of experience that I never would have gotten if it weren’t for the school and the specific community and environment that allows me to reach for things greater than what others tell me I’m able to do,” Cardenas said.
El Paso ISD opened the YWA public school eight years ago, and Cardenas will be part of just their fourth graduating class ever.
“I think the unique opportunity that this school provides is a multi-faceted education. They don’t push you into one specific thing. It is a STEAM school, but there’s a lot of room for you to actually just pursue whatever you want to pursue as long as you’re motivated,” Cardenas said.
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