Michelle Easter’s path to System Design and Management took her around the world. Pursuing a childhood inclination for mechanics wasn’t her first career choice. Instead, Michelle worked as a professional makeup artist and model for several years, traveling the globe and exploring new countries. Then she decided to try higher education and discovered a love of engineering. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in robotics from the Stevens Institute of Technology. Now she works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Michelle’s looking forward to continuing her education at SDM after learning about the program from a colleague. “I have a number of friends who went to MIT, and when I’ve told them that I’m coming they immediately reflect on what a wonderful experience they had,” she says. “From what I’ve heard so far, I know that it’s going to be profoundly impactful for me.”
What made you apply to the program? And why did you decide on SDM instead of a traditional MBA or other graduate degree?
For one, when I first finished my undergrad, I fully thought that I was a details person. But from working at JPL, I realized I’m more interested in the big picture, complex system elements and how they are impacted by the deep dive, detailed elements. I learned what systems engineering is at JPL and found it fascinating. There’s a different level of complexity when you have to not just manage your own hardware development, but also consider the functionality and changing needs of other subsystems.
And then around that time I was working in different leadership positions and became very interested in leadership in general. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time doing educational outreach activities. I started a nonprofit organization called Mind Makers which was focused on trying to make engineering education accessible and approachable for adults with unconventional backgrounds. I fell in love with all of the elements associated with spinning up and running that nonprofit. The whole process kind of made me curious about getting a formal education in business management. And so these parallel self-discoveries as I went along in my journey into JPL made me really want to do an MBA or a systems engineering master’s. I just didn’t see how those two went together until I met one of my coworkers recently and discovered that he was an SDM student. And it was an epiphany. This is the program that I feel I’ve been evolving into.
How do you think a systems approach will help you in your work?
Engineering management positions at JPL are inherently extremely technical. This is my only full-time technical job that I’ve had besides internships, and I’ve heard people say that at other aerospace companies, for example, you have a technical manager and a programmatic manager that work together. At JPL that is absolutely not the case. You wear both hats in your roles. I definitely think engineering management specifically seems to tie those things together in a way that will make me more effective at managing an engineering role at a place like JPL. Whatever my next task is, I absolutely know that having a solid understanding in systems engineering will help me do that task better. It’s not possible to do anything as groundbreaking as what we do at JPL without complex systems engineering.
What’s one part you’re looking forward to in the core class?
I’m very excited about the [spring] project. I heard about that from my colleague, and I was immediately impressed because that is not busy work. That is a real, super interesting technical challenge that has the opportunity to actually proceed and come to life. It seems like the projects that students are offered are giving them opportunities to apply deep and also broad systems thinking to problem solving, but with a very real application. And I love that MIT is preserving the ability of students to grow and explore in a way that they may not have the opportunity to do when they go back out into private industry. So I’m very excited about picking a project and doing it. It sounds more exciting than any school assignment that I’ve ever heard of.
What other courses at MIT are you interested in?
One of my reservations about a master’s degree was, what would I study that I’m not learning already at JPL? I didn’t want to just do a mechanical engineering master’s when I’m learning about robotics and control systems on the job. If I’m going to study something, I want it to be something that’s going to diversify my knowledge base and not just be more of the same. I love aerospace, but my knowledge is applicable to other industries. I definitely like the idea of getting exposed to other industries.
I went through the list of course options, and I had a field day. I highlighted everything that looked interesting and I feel like a third of the catalog is highlighted. It’s going to be really difficult to pick classes. There was one about advanced instrumentation, and I do a lot of testing at work, and instrumentation is key. There was another one on plasma physics, and I wanted to be a physics major when I first started college. I’ll definitely have to lean on my advisor to help me narrow it down.
What’s something that excites you about meeting your new classmates?
I really am excited about meeting other like-minded people. When I did my undergraduate degree, I was about 10 years older than the other students because I had a late start. I didn’t care because I was there for an education, but I didn’t get the socially engaging experience that I was looking for. I was in a very different headspace than a lot of my peers in school at the time. So this program feels a lot more like the other students are going to be in the same headspace as me. They have industry experience, and they come from different walks of life as well, so I feel more at home with the student body. So I’m very excited for that feeling of community, and also the broadness of perspectives from everybody.
