What do you do when you dream of exploring space, but the spaces in which you travel contain few clear routes to the stars? Cynthia Simmons, spaceflight engineering specialist and Deputy Center Director at NASA , knew what to do: point herself in the direction of the nearest signs of flight.
I sat down with Cynthia this March to learn more about her journey, which led her from Algebra II to the US Air Force Academy to classified satellite work. Then it was on to thermal engineering and, in 2010, a job at NASA. These and other stops along the way also altered Cynthia’s trajectory of learning, putting her on an unexpected path towards a PhD in mathematics after she turned 60.
What follows are excerpts from and summaries of our conversation, in which she described an ever-changing relationship with learning and doing mathematics that has relevance for those of us here on the ground in math classrooms.
In her K-12 math classes, Cynthia didn’t find much room for exploration: her experience was “crank, turn the crank.” She excelled, but the experience was uninspiring. After acceptance at the Air Force Academy, she became a standout Aerospace Engineering and Biology major.
After graduation, classified satellite work was also not the kind of space Cynthia was after. Working in various jobs and supporting her young family, she knew her career was not pointed in the right direction. So, as Cynthia put it, she decided to “re-vector,” and found herself a job closer to space exploration: “I was just a shift operator, but they realized that I could do a little bit more than that.”
Seeing solutions no one else saw, she unfroze antennas that co-workers thought hopelessly stuck: “How in the world are you doing this?” her supervisors wondered. A few promotions followed, and then an opportunity to do subcontracting for NASA itself. The problem was, Cynthia wasn’t a thermal engineer. Just as with the antennas, there was a solution: become one. She went back to school in her 40s, working overtime to pick up the math she needed – sometimes borrowing books from classmates on subjects that she had never encountered.
As Cynthia continued to take more engineering courses, she continued to surprise her professors and younger classmates with solutions to homework assignments. In one class, she recalled talking with a professor who told her “you know... I didn't think you could solve it in this way. But lo and behold you could… It took me 7 hours.” Cynthia remembers that it took her 40 hours, but it was a signal to her how much she loved deriving the math.
Cynthia recalled that in her own adolescence, no one in her life knew how to point out math that “matches what your brain is doing… what fascinates you... and what you could do something with.” As a spaceflight engineer, however, Cynthia realized something when working with partial differential equations: “Every time I had to derive the equations… that's when I was, like, ignited, and that was the first realization. It's the math. Not necessarily the applied physics. It's interesting, but I'm more fascinated with the math.”
At school, a conversation with a professor crystallized an issue that Cynthia had long experienced in her studies – one which both helped and hindered her work. She told him “I know you're thinking ‘I’m going to teach you in words. And then I'm going to teach you the symbols, right?’ But somebody like me, you need to go the other way around… and I said honestly, I get confused with the words… I'm struggling… because your words make shapes and they don't match the concepts of the math.”
Cynthia had similar experiences in conversations with her sisters. Cynthia noticed “they were using language, and I was stuck on the shape. If the shape didn't make sense for the rest of the sentence… I couldn't explain to them that I was seeing the shape.”
It was in a Tai Chi class that Cynthia had a revelation. A fellow student, who happened to be a psychologist, recognized her experiences as related to synesthesia. Cynthia agreed: “yeah, like I see shapes. They're abstract shapes, they move and spiral. But it's like they contain information.”
Cynthia learned to trust her synesthesia and intuition in class and at work. Juggling on the job training and graduate school work, Cynthia found that the engineering design of the lunar orbiter needed some help. In working with her colleagues, she had an idea: “Let's go derive the equations… we'll do it separately and then we'll compare.” She and a coworker got a solution – one not in any textbook – and that math is keeping the orbiter flying around the moon today.
Cynthia continued to solve problems with others at work and in class, completed her master’s degree in aerospace engineering, and taught herself some cryogenic engineering along the way. As Cynthia rose in her professional career, she worked on space science instruments and organized engineering teams. Under her guidance, solutions had the chance to arise through collaboration. Any team member could suggest a method, unorthodox or not.
In reflecting upon the lunar orbiter work, Cynthia noted, “What I enjoy the most is there was no solution manual for me to check anything against... It was so complex… could I make sense of what I was seeing, and could I capture it in math? That for me was really exciting.”
Twenty years after her master’s, the complexity of such derivations kept tugging at Cynthia's brain. Once, Cynthia Simmons dismissed the idea of pursuing math; it didn't seem worthwhile to devote years to intense focus on what she termed “a dot” of knowledge. Having achieved her dreams of space exploration, however, and with a new understanding how her mind shapes her learning, a new direction called.
Fascinated by mathematical possibilities, Cynthia went back to school. She designed a personalized math PhD program and decided to pursue it (while still working full time). For Cynthia Simmons, there is math still to be found: this time in the space she is creating for herself.
Ralph Pantozzi is a Presidential Awardee in 7-12 mathematics and was a high school math teacher in New Jersey for 32 years. Ralph is currently living in Washington DC as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow. Any opinions he expresses here are his own and do not represent the positions of the program or its sponsors.