It’s Academic

Newspaper

National Honor Society

Campus Ministry

Maryland Math League

Rugby (2 years as player, 2 years as manager)

Soccer (2 years as manager)

Basketball (1 year as manager)

 

McMullen Capstone Project- "For basically my whole life, I have been obsessed with aviation and space, but attempting an aerospace engineering-type project seemed a bit farfetched for me given what little technical knowledge I had at the time. Instead, I decided to do a thorough analysis of the airline industry, including its history and attempting to project forward it’s future. This came not that long after 9/11, which crippled the airline industry and had sent most major airlines into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A major conclusion was that the future of the industry depended on a consolidation of the then many smaller carriers and expansion of low-cost carriers. Since then, we’ve seen numerous mergers (Continental and United, Delta and Northwest, American and US Airways, Alaska and Virgin America) and largescale growth of low-cost carriers Southwest, JetBlue, Spirit, and Frontier. The industry has also posted record profits over the past few years, after years of bleeding money."

Calvert Hall has had a pretty good history with getting students accepted to Notre Dame, especially from the McMullen program. The McMullen program’s reputation and legacy of the capstone project almost certainly helped distinguish me from other applicants.

“I think more than anything, the McMullen program provided me with a curriculum that expected excellence. The breadth and depth of classes that I was exposed to as a McMullen scholar helped prepare me for undergrad work at Notre Dame, but more so showed me that challenging work could also be rewarding work. The McMullen senior project was my first exposure to any significant research work, and through that project I first started developing some of the research skills that have become essential in my daily life as a scientist.”

 

Best thing about being in the McMullen Program- "I think the camaraderie stands out more than anything. I wouldn’t say I was great friends with everyone in the program, but there was a friendly spirit of competition with everyone that helped each of us push to do better than we might otherwise have. Pushing ourselves to succeed in honors subjects we might otherwise not have attempted really paid off come college. The close friends I did make from the program continue to be my friends today."

Advice to current students in the McMullen Program- “Challenge yourself. One thing I didn’t really learn about myself until towards the end of my time at CHC was that if I put in the work, I could be just as successful as anyone else in the program. Our valedictorian – one of my closest friends from CHC – was in a league of his own academically, but senior year I finally realized that while I might not quite get the same grades or test scores as him, if I worked hard enough I just might put some pressure on him.

Challenge yourself both academically and through extra curriculars. Over my four years at the Hall, every year I added a few more activities on top of increasingly tough classes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my best grades came later on, when I was the busiest.

Finally, set a goal and work for it. Sophomore or Junior year I met with my guidance counselor Mr. Kerr and told him I wanted to go to Notre Dame. He looked at my grades and PSAT scores and told me that I could do that, but I’d have to work pretty hard at it. That’s all I needed – I buckled down both in class and as I got ready for the SAT and ultimately did everything I needed to get into Notre Dame and more”.

McMullen field trips – Mike remembers going on quite a few trips, including to see the play Sweeney Todd and the movie The Da Vinci Code. The trips that stand out most were the yearly trips to The National Gallery of Art in DC and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. “I was never much of an art buff, but those trips helped me develop an appreciation of art and to this day I enjoy going to those and other galleries and museums”.

College Days-Mike graduated from University of Notre Dame with a BS Aerospace Engineering in 2010; a Masters of Education in Mathematics in 2012 from the Alliance for Catholic Education: Service Through Teaching program (ACE). He also earned a MS from University of Colorado Boulder in Aerospace Engineering Sciences in 2014. Mike is a PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences Defense: Fall 2018 from the University of Colorado. His thesis is A Daily-Updated GRACE Water Storage Estimate for Improving Hydrology Models and Forecasting.

“After undergrad, I spent two years as a teacher as part of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education program (ACE) while earning a Master of Education degree. ACE placed me at a co-ed Catholic high school about 2/3 the size of Calvert Hall in east Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I taught most levels of Math as well as freshmen Physical Science, and also was the Varsity Softball head coach and a Varsity Football assistant coach. I don’t think that I would trade those two years – those daily interactions with students and athletes and the intensive focus on both learning to teach and growing deeper in faith – for anything. . Despite all the difficult days and all the struggling students, the little victories and simple joys are what have stuck with me the most. From a tough subject finally clicking with the students to joking with students in the halls to seeing athletes put it all together and fight for their school and teammates, those two years taught me so much about living a life of compassion, faith, and love. The friends I made in the ACE program (who took classes with me over two summers at Notre Dame before also being assigned to Catholic schools around the country) and at my school continue to be some of my closest and most faith-filled friends.”

At Notre Dame, Mike was involved with Teamwork for Tomorrow (tutoring & big brother program for South Bend youth), AIAA – American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Intramural Sports (Baseball, Flag Football, Ultimate, Softball, Soccer, Volleyball) and Campus Ministry. He did Undergraduate Research in Flow Physics and Control Lab.

Mike has had several internships including Geodesy Intern, SGT Inc., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (summers 2013-2016) as well as Infra Engineering Intern, GE Aviation, Evendale, OH (summer 2009).

His current academic work- Mike is currently in the final few months pursuing a PhD in aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the past 2+ years, he has been a NASA Earth and Space Sciences Fellow, and to work in close collaboration with NASA scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. From a coursework standpoint, Mike has become an expert in Astrodynamics, Satellite Navigation, Orbits, Estimation Theory, and Geodesy (the study of Earth’s shape and composition). “My research in many ways combines these topics, and I am currently studying Earth’s time-variable gravity field using data from a set of NASA satellites. While from high school physics we might think of gravity as being a single value (9.81 meters per second squared!), in reality gravity has subtle variations both around the globe and over time. Since gravity is really just the effect of bodies of mass interacting with one another, if we think about the Earth’s non-uniform surface we can start to picture how gravity is also non-uniform. Consider the Greenland Ice Sheet, a multiple-mile thick sheet of ice sitting on top of the continent: that block of ice is itself a large mass, which means it creates a local gravitational “high” relative to the surrounding area. Using NASA satellites, we are able to map out these local variations in the gravity field and also track how these variations change over time. For example, if Greenland’s gravity signature slowly weakens over time, we can attribute this to the ice sheet melting into the oceans and directly measure how much ice melts. In other words, we can weigh continents from space! I am specifically looking at how we can take these measurements and improve our knowledge of changes in gravity over time, and in doing so better inform drought and flood forecasting and monitoring tools”.

Future Plans-Mike is currently pursuing a number of opportunities to continue his research, though nothing has been finalized yet. He would like to join either a NASA or university research center to continue my work in satellite geodesy and earth science. "Ask me again in a few months!"