At the end of a glamorous evening with world-famous, record-breaking, and brilliant, bold experimental test pilots, the Flight Test Historical Foundation was, as is said, “All about the kids.”

Audience applause was the loudest and longest for two college scholarship recipients and special recognition for the young girls pioneering the STARBASE 2.0 experience underway at Edwards AFB.

Marie Fullerton, a widow of the late test pilot and Space Shuttle astronaut C. Gordon Fullerton, formally presented the $2,000 Memorial Scholarship for 2019 to Andrea Arias, a junior in the Cal State University Long Beach-Antelope Valley Engineering Program, A sum cum laude graduate of Antelope Valley College’s Associates in Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Andrea plans to graduate in the fall of 2022 with a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering.

Caleb Epps, a recipient of the 2021 William J. “Pete” Knight Scholarship, is an AV College graduate with three Associates of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics. A junior in the same CSLB-AVE Engineering Program, he expects to graduate with a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering in 2022. Following internships with several Antelope Valley companies, Caleb was hired in June of this year as a Stratolaunch avionics intern.

Leading STEM education

Southern California’s Aerospace Valley region is setting the pace for an early start in introducing next generations to the possibilities opened by learning science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

At this year’s community-based Gathering of Eagles, a new iteration of the STEM movement was introduced. Four early to middle years high school girls, Annahy Torres, Savannah Bailey, Johanna Marquez, and Carolina Rivas were introduced for an Edwards STARBASE 2.0 initiative, under the direction of Amira Flores, and which began in July. Working in teams of four, the young women are preparing to compete in the All-American Rocketry Challenge, an opportunity to design, build and launch model rockets while learning to solve engineering problems.