Recently named Goldwater Scholar talks future pursuits

One of the most distinguished undergraduate awards of its kind, the Goldwater Scholarship is given to college second- and third-years studying the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering and planning to do research in those fields. This year, 211 recipients from the United States were chosen from a pool of 1,280 applicants including NC State’s own Madison Maloney, a third-year studying aerospace engineering. Technician had the chance to speak with Maloney about the Goldwater Scholarship process and her future plans to work for NASA.

Has it settled in yet that you are a Goldwater Scholar? 

I don’t think that it really has. I got the certificate in the mail yesterday and a letter from the chancellor. I really wasn’t expecting to win the award so I don’t think it has fully set in but interviews like this are kind of making it real now.

How long was the whole process for you from start to finish?

I started to apply for the university endorsement back around September or October because the university gets up to four endorsements for the award, then over break — over Christmas break — I kind of refined, reworked my application and submitted it for national consideration in January. I found out the last Friday in March.

What was the hardest part about it?

I think kind of learning how to put my story down on paper because the Goldwater is something where they don’t want to see you just check off boxes; they don’t want to just see bullet points on a resume. They really want to know about you as a person, why you are pursuing the things that you are pursuing, and what your plans are to get from point A to point B. Kind of telling that story was what I learned the most throughout the process but it was a really enjoyable process and something that I think I benefited from greatly even had I not won.

How important was this to you on a personal level? Was it something that you were always planning on pursuing?

Yeah, it’s pretty special to me because it’s something that I wrote down on paper my freshman year at NC State and something that I wanted to work towards. I’m a Park Scholar so since I’ve been at NC State, there have been three other Park Scholars — Mithi De Los Reyes, Chris Cooper and Vishwas Rao — who’ve all won the Goldwater so I had them to look up to and having them as an example really motivated me to pursue this so I knew this was something I was working towards all along. You can apply as a sophomore or junior but I did not apply as a sophomore so I knew this was my last shot so it is really special.

Speaking of pursuing, I hear that you are also interested in pursuing a career at NASA. What, or who, influenced you most in deciding that you wanted to be a part of such a historic organization?

This is a story that I really love to tell. Back in probably 6th or 7th grade, I became really interested in human space exploration from watching a variety of movies like “Apollo 13” and “October Sky” and then also I’ve always been drawn to challenges and it represents a lot of the best of humanity; people coming together to achieve a challenging goal. It’s really exciting on behalf of humanity really so it’s something that I was interested in but being from eastern North Carolina, you know, there’s not really much space industry out there. I didn’t know any engineers as I was growing up but I knew I was good in math and science and I had this interest.

I knew I wanted to be involved in human space exploration, be an astronaut or work for NASA but I didn’t tell many people initially because I thought it may have sounded a bit outlandish given the context. But that all changed around my sophomore year in high school when Christina Koch — who is from Jacksonville, NC, and actually graduated from NC State — was selected as an astronaut candidate. I can clearly remember reading the headline when she was selected and running and telling my parents and from that point on to me it kind of transitioned from this dream that I kept to myself to this thing that I was pursuing full throttle at all times because I had seen somebody who had been there and done that.

Since that point, Christina has really been my inspiration and she is kind of a mentor to me now. We communicate every once in a while and check in so I’ve been very blessed to look up to her but I think — you know, it’s been a dream of mine for a while but it really became real when she was selected as an astronaut candidate because I was at point, sophomore year in high school, where I had to start thinking about what I was going to pursue in college and that kind of really solidified it for me.

What do you hope that young girls take away from your success and your aspirations? 

Just that they can do what they want to do and if that’s not engineering, then it’s not engineering but if somebody can look at what I’ve done — especially a young girl — and say ‘you know maybe I can do it,’ then that makes my journey all the more worthwhile if somebody thinks they can go for what they want to go for; they can consider these fields. For them to be able to know that someone else is doing it, I think is really, really important and it is something that I’ve tried to help with a lot back in my home county, Pitt County — I’m from Greenville originally. I’ve tried to reach out back home so I’ve spoken with school groups of girls that are looking into different fields; I’ve mentored a student doing a project based on space exploration. I’ve just really tried to do what I can to give back to that community in that sense and try to be a role model as much as possible because I know how important it is — especially at that stage in your life — to be able to have the confidence to pursue that sort of thing.