Lessons from space With a little help from NASA, a graduate of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics realizes a dream

Take it from a Mainer who knows: Pursuing your dreams can take you just about anywhere, even outer space, but you may have to go to Huntsville, Alabama first. Cody Snow, 19, who graduated Saturday from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, has been there.

On Space Day, May 7, he delivered a message to pupils in Brunswick on how he got there, joining 23 other speakers including astronaut Chris Cassidy, who grew up in York, University of Maine physics professor Neil Comins, Solar System Ambassador Joan Chamberlain, and Robin Kennedy from the Challenger Learning Center of Maine.

Snow, 19, the youngest of the 23, showed the fifth-grade students of Julie Soule and Kristi Bailey at Hawthorne Elementary how his dream was partially realized through an internship with NASA, but began with MSSM.

A residential magnet school created by the Maine State Legislature in 1995, MSSM, which shares space with the Limestone kindergarten through grade 12 in the town’s school, specializes in mathematics and science and provides an atmosphere for students who want to focus on their studies.

Snow turned to the school because he wanted more of a challenge than his high school in Ashland could offer. He said his parents always encouraged his scientific pursuits, though they were not particularly fond of the messes he made in discovering how things worked.

“He was always curious,” Snow’s mother, Janice Snow, said. “He’d be in the barn trying to make stuff work, and we always had to watch him.”

Snow’s interest is in the field of engineering, more precisely the aerospace industry, so when it came time to complete a self-driven and single-focused study, a school requirement, Snow pursued a course that met his high ambitions.

During May term last year – the school runs on a schedule different than most – students must participate in a school sponsored trip, enroll in a single course, or arrange an internship any where in the world, according to Deborah McGann, a chemistry teacher at MSSM. The internships can take a lot more effort than the other avenues.

“The student is responsible for choosing the area of interest, locating a sponsor and making housing arrangements,” McGann said. In addition students must keep journals during the internship, write a report and make a presentation to the student body when they get back.

Determined to find an internship, Snow inquired at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California, looked into studying string theory at Yale and approached several Maine engineering firms, but nothing lined up until he received a response from the Maine Space Grant Consortium.

“It didn’t take long for Jana Hall, the controller and coordinator of education activities at the MSGC, to return my eye-bleeder of an e-mail with a proposal of her own: that, if I were interested – I still laugh at that one – she had a possible opportunity lined up at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama,” Snow said.

The offer was unique. The space consortium provides internship opportunities to college students, not high school students, but for Snow they made their first exception, according to an e-mail from Hall. Persuaded by the passion that Snow feels is central to much of who he is and what he does, the space consortium agreed to fund Snow’s travel and housing for a 10-day peek into NASA’s inner world.

On Mother’s Day, Snow’s parents sent him off on a plane on his first trip by himself outside of Maine. When he reached Alabama he settled into his room in a University of Alabama in Huntsville dorm and prepared to see what much of the United States only glimpses through newspaper stories on space shuttle missions and discoveries on Mars.

“I finally found out why it takes them so long to do anything when they’re not racing against another country like in the space race during the sixties,” said Snow. “I realized that my idea of this ‘perfect scientific world’ was, in fact, false. But not in a bad way.”

Snow connected with NASA on a human level, discovering that the brains that send humans into space belong to real people. He was paired with a mentor, sensors researcher for Madison Research Corporation Valentin Korman, who immersed Snow into his work involving fuel-flow sensors and optics.

Snow’s experience at NASA has taught him that what may seem far-fetched in Maine is entirely possible if you have the enthusiasm and the drive to go after it. He has realized how important it is to keep communications open and how to make connections. And he has learned the significance of allowing passion to show through to get what you want.

As pictures of rockets, water skiing attempts, and lab work from his Alabama stay filtered through fifth-grade hands at Brunswick’s Space Day prompting a flood of questions, Snow closed his presentation with this advice: “I just want to reiterate the importance of being passionate, and if there is anything that you’re interested in, do it.”

Snow plans to attend the University of Maine in Orono next fall to pursue his interests in “how things work.” Or maybe theater. Anything is possible. As long as there’s passion.