07/01/2025
To infinity and beyond! Three Blue Ridge Community College students are interning with NASA this summer!
The Virginia Space Grant Consortium, in partnership with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), NASA Langley Research Center, and NASA Wallops Flight Facility, annually offers the “STEM Takes Flight at Virginia’s Community Colleges” initiative. This year BRCC students Wesley Morgan, Emma Egeli, and Ryan Cox were selected for the competitive “STEM Takes Flight” internship program and are spending their summer at the Langley Research Center in Hampton.
“I wanted to participate in this internship because it would help me gain experience and learn more about the STEM field on a professional level,” explained Emma. She added, “It could also be a major first step in landing a career at NASA in the future, which has been an interest of mine since I was in middle school.”
Wesley was an intern at NASA last summer, and was thrilled to get a second opportunity! “Interning at NASA is basically my foot in the door to the space industry. I have a passion for space exploration as well as advancing our understanding of the universe. By returning to this internship, I stay involved in NASA’s mission and get to stay up to date with the frontier of science and technology,” he said.
“STEM Takes Flight” provides student with a paid internship working side-by-side with NASA research advisors on designated research projects over the course of a 10-week, 40-hour- per-week session.
Wesley and Emma graduated from BRCC in May. Wesley will be transferring to Virginia Tech to continue his studies in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, and plans to pursue a career in the space industry. Emma is also transferring to Virginia Tech to study Computer Science and pursue minors in Cybersecurity and Human-Computer Interaction. Ryan is a Computer Science student at BRCC.