Morgan Montalvo Age: 18
Student, California Polytechnic State University San Louis Obispo, CA
UNDER THIRTY M
organ Montalvo “was a force to be reck- oned with from day one,” former teacher and robotics mentor Nancy McIntyre wrote when recommending Morgan for an SME Education Foundation (SME-EF) scholar- ship. ‘Day one’ was when Morgan, in the summer before sixth grade, wandered into McIntyre’s robotics class—a class Morgan took only because she wanted to fill the time between an earlier class and when her mom could pick her up. It was “a class that was filled with mostly boys,” McIntyre remembered: “Morgan was never intimidated by the boys.” As the summer progressed, she became someone the rest of the class learned to listen to.
Others learned to listen as well. Morgan gradu- ated high school after achieving a 4.2 GPA in AP and honors-level courses, leading her field hockey team as captain, and earning a Black Belt in karate. She is now a college freshman studying aerospace engineering at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo—aided by that $70,000 SME-EF family scholarship. But she still remembers that long- ago summer class fondly—how
they made robots from kits and worked to get them to do simple tasks in the context of games. She’s been learning how to design and build robots ever since. “I became addicted to the thrill of working with others to create a solution to a complex problem, which explains why I continue with robotics.”
That first summer class got her involved with the Eagle Engineering Robotics team: She has managed to qualify for the VEX Robotics World Champion- ship—an annual competition of over 600 top robotics teams from around the world—every year since 2008.
122
ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | July 2014
And she has done more than compete, becoming in effect a goodwill ambassador for robotics, engineer- ing and STEM education both in the US and abroad. As SME-EF told us when recommending Morgan for recognition, “Morgan has traveled to Hawaii to teach students and teachers how to develop similar robot- ics programs, to New Zealand and Tokyo to work on service-related projects, to Cork, Ireland to conduct workshops for new teams and participate in that city’s Inaugural VEX Robotics Competition.” When asked about her travels, Morgan said that the experience has been “mindboggling, especially places like New Zealand and Japan—places that seem so completely different from what we’re used to. Mindboggling to see these people across the world, miles and miles away, playing the same robot game as we do—but having completely different ideas about it."
“I became addicted to the thrill of working with others to create a solution to a complex problem.”
Morgan has no doubt as to how she wants to put her education and experiences to work after she graduates: She looks to the stars. Years ago she visited the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena—the lead
US center for robotic exploration of the solar system, according to NASA—and the experience was, she says now, “an epiphany, which combined my love for space and engineering. I want to work in aerospace because I want to be directly involved in designing a satellite or rover to help launch the world into a new age of discovery.” Morgan’s early champion, teacher Nancy Mc- Intyre, doesn’t doubt her on this: She wrote that Mor- gan “will likely end up at JPL building and running the robotics missions throughout the universe.” ME
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208