For Nylana (Navajo) the sky isn’t the limit—her dreams are out of this world. Nylana, an American Indian College Fund scholar and student ambassador who has worked in internships at NASA throughout her undergraduate education, will be graduating from Navajo Technical University (NTU) this fall with dual degrees in industrial engineering and mechanical engineering.
Although she first studied informational technology (IT) major and cybersecurity at NTU, she ventured into the world of engineering after an American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) event, where she met several engineers that would become her NASA mentors. During her 2019 summer internship with NASA that followed, she found engineering challenged her in a way she hadn’t experienced before.
Nylana said she was challenged throughout her undergraduate career both in her classes and by world events. After her first summer with NASA, the pandemic drastically changed how she received her education. Suddenly, she wasn’t making the daily 50-mile one-way drive from Gallup to Crown Point, New Mexico to attend classes, and like most students, all of her interactions with her professors and classmates were on Zoom. Even the second year of her NASA summer internship was completely remote. She said it changed what the interns learned, as they turned their focus to theoretical work and techniques until everyone could gain some hands-on experience in the fall of 2020.
For the second half of 2020 and all of 2021, Nylana participated in a hybrid schedule that allowed her to attend classes and go to the lab for her internship on-site at NTU a few days of the week. But it was not until the summer of 2022 when she got to dive back into in-person projects fully, working at the Sandia National Laboratory in mechanical design for a classified DOD project.
From there Nylana went straight to a fall internship at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to learn more about liquid propulsion printing, inspiring her to continue her additive studies. Her goal now is to conduct her own research and design in mechanical engineering at NTU with materials donated by NASA and to have her work published. The focus of her proposed research would be to optimize parameter development (the design and implementation of manufacturing controls) to produce dense materials and minimize defects throughout the manufacturing process for aerospace use, while improving productivity. Such a project, she says, would highlight the work being done at tribal colleges and universities.
Nylana isn’t just academically accomplished—she is also a community leader. She has served as a student ambassador, the vice president of her university’s student senate, and the president of both the AISES and Women in STEM groups on campus. She has also served as a Disney Scholar and spoke at the Points of Light Conference in Chicago this summer to raise awareness about what her studies and internship entail to encourage other young people interested in STEM careers.
None of this came as a surprise to her family. Nylana’s mother reminded her when she switched majors that, even as a girl, Nylana liked to pull things apart to see how they worked. Though her siblings work in different fields, they set a path to academic and career success for her to follow.
Now that her undergraduate journey is coming to an end, she is faced with decisions to make about her future. She is considering applying to participate in Disney’s graduate program to build her leadership skills and branch out from the aerospace focus she’s enjoyed with NASA. Wherever her journey takes her in the future, Nylana will stick to her goal of reaching for the stars and she hopes others will, too.
Her advice to other students? “Be curious and ask a lot of questions. You’re always going to be a student regardless of age.”
Her hope for other students is they receive the same support she did from faculty, mentors, family, and more. She said that foundation of support encouraged her to move forward—maybe in Nylana’s case, is what launched her success.