Flowering from S.T.E.M. Club President found purpose in a messy situation

MALONE

From animation to marketing, and now computer science and electrical engineering.

Gina T. Rubio, was not always interested in the sciences.

Today, she combines all her skills acquired throughout her fluctuating career as S.T.E.M. Club President. It was not until she was interning for ESPN for the X Games she had an epiphany.

The floor was littered with Red Bull energy drink cans.

“I was like, there’s so much trash, you guys don’t recycle. There was like a lot of stuff going on, I’m like I can’t. I was really, a big person with, that dealt with, the Surfrider Foundation, like that’s a big deal,” Rubio said.

Being involved with the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit that aims to protect the ocean, meant recycling was important to Rubio.

“That would be one of my personal projects would be to like to build something that could really help out cleaning out the oceans, or the oceanic life forms, or anything of that kind,” Rubio said.

At the time Rubio was working in marketing, this incident helped push her into another field. Shortly after starting a job at Solar City the company merged with Tesla. She was happy to switch from the energy to the car industry.“I was very excited to be working with Tesla because I thought I was going to be surrounded by engineers or scientists,” Rubio said.

Rubio found that her job was more sales-based and did not involve the innovation and science she was craving. She began researching her scientific interests and looking for NASA tours.

“I started just to have this enormous appetite of wow, there’s so much more that I don’t know that I want to figure out and understand,” Rubio said.

Rubio’s transition from animation to marketing was not as drastic as her jump to the sciences.

Prior to her career in marketing and entertainment, Rubio studied animation at Cal Arts.

“It does feel a little bit challenging when somebody says that they’ve done things for years, they understood physics since they were in junior high, I never was really exposed to it. I was more exposed to art,” Rubio said.

Despite this, Rubio found herself more at home among her new peers.

“I felt a lot more comfortable with nerds. I was like ‘Oh, I am a nerd’,” Rubio said.

After contacting JPL, Rubio learned of the National Community College Aerospace Scholars. She submitted the necessary paperwork and wrote an essay.

“I was obsessed with the moon when I was five years old. I just would stare at it. I’d be like, this is where the little crevices [are], like how far it is. And so I wrote that experience and that’s what got me into the program, and a bunch of other things,” Rubio said.

Sharing her experience of gazing at the moon as a child helped Rubio gain admission into the program.

Rubio had the chance to go to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. There Rubio, along with other NCAS students, worked on developing a rover out of Legos, met scientists, and viewed instruments that would soon be in space.

“Whatever they send there [space], they have to make sure that it’s not shaking and it won’t get broken apart when it gets there, because of all the rattling when it’s going into the actual rocket,” Rubio said.

It was in the Ames Research Center Rubio was recommended to go and get more insight from the college’s S.T.E.M. club, but it didn’t exist.

“There was no S.T.E.M. Club here and that’s exactly what they told me to go get advice from my project. I’m like, I don’t have anybody to go get advice from because it doesn’t exist. And I think that’s like another reason why I was more of a push to get it done,” Rubio said.

Rubio takes initiative in reaching out to people to fi nd guest speakers for S.T.E.M. Club.

“All the guest speakers that I’ve had for the club or anything of that nature is me actually reaching out to them cold turkey,” Rubio said. “I am seriously going out of my way to communicate with these people and be like, ‘Hey, I really care and I really want you to be part of us here and I know this is totally free but thank you so much.’” dmalone.roundupnews@gmail.com

Professor Dale Fields, Discipline Adviser of Astronomy and professor, said he is impressed with Rubio’s enthusiasm.

“A lot of people might say, ‘Oh, you know, that’s cool’, and then they just go home and continue their lives. But Gina says, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I’m going to go out and go to a Caltech lecture and fi nd out more about it. Or I’m going to go read it, five web pages and see two youtube videos to help me,’” Fields said.

Professor Travis Orloff, Instructor of Physics & Planetary Sciences, said he thinks Rubio is one of the most enthusiastic students he has ever had.

“She just has more drive and curiosity and interest in science and astronomy and planetary science in specific than, than almost any other students I’ve encountered before. She has genuine enthusiasm. She has absolutely no fear and just asking all the questions you possibly can. She actively seeks out these additional opportunities or presentations at places like JPL or Caltech,” Orloff said. Recycling, or the lack thereof, changed the course of Rubio’s life.