For the last three years, the University of Alabama Rocket Girls have represented UA at NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative, one of the most challenging, high-caliber competitions in rocketry for university students. Although NASA will not be hosting USLI this year as they have in the past, the team members have many plans for how they want the team to move forward from here.

Now in their fourth year together, the team’s goals include establishing a Tuscaloosa chapter with the National Association of Rocketry. Creating a local NAR chapter will provide the team with better opportunities to inform Tuscaloosa about rocketry through events such as community rocketry workshops and a local launch site in Tuscaloosa. The team is also looking into other competition opportunities through NAR.

Although not competing in USLI this year will be an adjustment, it will allow the team to have more flexibility for different kinds of competitions, members of the team said.

“We hold ourselves to a higher standard now that we’ve been through that [USLI competition,} and we want to maintain that standard moving forward into any competition we do just because we’ve learned so much, and we don’t want to backtrack,” Noelle Ridlehuber, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering and the chief engineer for the Rocket Girls, said.

Part of competition in the USLI required the Rocket Girls to reach out in the local community, particularly to middle school students. Although this outreach is no longer required of the girls for competition eligibility, the Rocket Girls said they want to continue encouraging students as they have in the past. The team said they will continue to present expositions at the McWane Center in Birmingham and to visit local schools.

“The outreach is a wonderful thing. Rockets are cool. They shoot off fire, and they go high. It’s highly visible, and it’s a good lead into the junior high and high school group,” Paul Hubner, faculty advisor for the UA Rocket Girls, said.

The UA Rocket Girls want the team to continue to be a strong part of The University of Alabama. They are now integrating the group to include male UA students.

“We’ve established a lot of notoriety here and for our college, and I think that we want to continue that. If we need to bring guys on to do it, we’ll do it,” Shelby Cochran, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering and project manager for the Rocket Girls, said.

Cochran said the team members want to pass on the knowledge and experience they have gained to others who are interested.

“We have been privileged with this team to be able to have leadership experience and technical knowledge and technical writing abilities that other design teams on campus don’t have. We want to continue that for others as well,” Cochran said.

For more information about the UA Rocket Girls, visit the team’s website at rocketgirls.eng.ua.edu, follow them on Twitter @UARocketGirls or like their Facebook page.