Ashley Scroggins works on Earth and Space Science missions for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and harbors dreams of one day flying in a manned space craft.  Brian Kelly is hitting the books at SLU's medical school hoping one day to invent something.  Megan Moll is teaching algebra, biology and calculus to lower income students as part of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Newark, N.J.  Darren Pais is a Ph.D. student at Princeton University.

Different paths taken by each but all with an engineering degree from SLU.  And all former SLU Presidential Scholar recipients.  The scholarship is a four-year, full tuition awarded to approximately 30 students annually.  Recipients represent some of hte most exemplary student leaders on SLU's campus.

"I still can't believe this is my job," said Scroggins, who graduated in 2008 with an Honors Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and an Engineering Math minor.  "I mean, other than hopping on a rocket and being an astronaut, I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing."

While at SLU, Scroggins participated in a co-op with GE Aircraft Engines and with NASA.  Upon graduation, she converted to a full-time position at NASA-GSFC in the Propulsion Branch.  She currently works on the propulsion systems that control satellites after launch.  Her department designs, analyzes, builds and test systems as well as supports the mission while the satellite is in orbit.

She also worked on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is currently orbiting the Moon; Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which is monitoring the Sun's activity; Glory, an out-of-house mission which unfortunately failed at launch this past February; and currently working on the Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GPM), which is a partnership with the Japanese space agency (JAXA) and will measure precipitation across the entire Earth's surface.

"I get to touch things that actually go into space," said the Illinois native.  "Since fifth grade I've always known I wanted to be an astronaut and pretty much since then have been on a laser-guided path to NASA."

Scroggins is grateful for the opportunities she was exposed to at Parks College.  "I couldn't have been more prepared for my job at NASA," she said.  "You learn how to think in engineering school, you learn the basics, how to work with fluids.  Ultimately, engineers are problem solvers.  At SLU we learned to step back, think outside the box, be as creative as possible and be ready to tackle different things once we landed jobs."

Brian Kelly feels the same way.  A May 2011 graduate in biomedical engineering, Kelly is now hitting a different set of books.  This time as a SLU med student.

"I am interested in more of the technical field of medicine because I enjoy working with instruments and new technology," Kelly said.  "Engineering school taught me how all these instruments work and how things are designed an then, obviously, in medicine, you have to have an understanding of how these things work when you are using them in a medical procedure."

Colleague Meghan Moll, who graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering with Kelly, decided she wanted to use her talent to teach underprivileged students.  Today she is teaching as part of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, completing her first year of service in a Cristo Rey school in New Jersey.  She teaches high school sections of algebra, biology and calculus.  "Since I was recently a student myself, it's been a bit of a transition now switching to the role of a teacher," Moll said.  Moll is currently trying to determine if she wants to continue her career as a teacher or find a job as an engineer.  "I love both types of work very much," said the former St. Louisan.  "So it's going to be a hard decision for me to make at the end of this year."

Darren Pais, an aerospace engineering and applied mathematics graduate, is a doctoral candidate in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.  His research lies at the intersection of two fields, namely evolutionary biology and multi-agent cooperative control, and is focused on the study of emergent collective behavior, in biology and in robotics, from the perspective of evolution.  He is the recipient of the 2011 Princeton University Harold W. Dodds Honorific fellowship and the 2009 AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control graduate award. 

Whether in space, in a medical research facility or a classroom, Scroggins, Kelly and Moll and Pais represent the faces not only of former SLU Presidential scholars, but of future leaders in their own respective fields.