Arts & Sciences Magazine

By Brianne Garrett

Korine Powers could have never predicted that a career covering science—space to be exact—would be in the stars.

In the early stages of pursuing a PhD in English and American literature from Boston University, Powers (GRS’24) was confident that she would remain in academia.

“My dissertation is on cowboys and serial killers,” says Powers, with a chuckle. With such niche interests and a penchant for teaching, her tentative plan was to become a professor—a common route for English PhD candidates. But it turns out that comprehensive training in communications and language development also equipped her for a career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

It’s a testament to the value of humanities degrees, emphasizes Powers, and proof that companies across the most unlikely of sectors—even space exploration—are seeking the very transferable skills of English majors. “It’s nice to see that the workforce still needs people who can expound on technical topics in a real, human way,” she says—even amidst the surge of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools.

Powers’ time at the U.S. government’s civil space agency began in 2020 as an intern coordinator supporting the professional development of the high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation Internship Project. “I thought of myself as a professionalization mentor,” says Powers, who notes that the work had a lot in common with the English and writing courses she taught at BU. She created a syllabus that measured the development of the cohort. She also facilitated networking opportunities, refined resumes, and, in some cases, assisted with grad school and college applications.

“I focused on how I could make students from all of these backgrounds and different areas of thinking feel equipped to be part of this community,” says Powers. It’s work that she remains proud of—helping to build diverse talent pipelines and broaden the scope of what NASA’s workforce and the general future of the industry could look like. “It was a total accident,” says Powers. “But a really happy one.”

Off the success of that twelve-week summer gig, Powers stayed on with NASA as a communications specialist. In 2022, she accepted a full-time position, pivoting to take on more responsibilities in research, writing, and internal programming, while still working toward her English PhD. Today, Powers is the lead writer and communications strategist for Space Communications and Navigation at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Powers serves as the integral conduit between major NASA developments and the general public. This means creating communications across various forms of media, from longform articles and press releases to videos and social media posts—translating often complex science into everyday language. Considering NASA is widely regarded as the leading agency for space development globally, communicating this cutting-edge progress to the masses is a much-needed function.

The process always starts the same way: “We begin by interviewing a subject matter expert, which is like the mission lead or head engineer on a project,” says Powers. “I have to figure out how to provide the science details that excite our subject matter experts in a way that the general public can understand.”

It can be challenging breaking down concepts—Powers says quantum communications is among the toughest subjects to explain—but having a direct line to NASA engineers is helpful. “I get impressed every day by the people I talk to,” she says. “I got into English for the research element—being able to put things together, think about them, and try to understand what it’s teaching us about ourselves and about the world. NASA is all about that.”

“English continues to be so important to how we think,” says Powers. “I hope when people consider what they want to do, especially from a graduate perspective, they don’t feel like they have to put themselves in one box.”

This past January, Powers spoke with leaders from two space agencies and multiple NASA centers for an article about a lunar payload testing whether signals from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations like GPS could help future astronauts and lunar rovers navigate on and around the Moon.

Whenever possible, Powers likes to experience developments firsthand. One of her favorite examples was taking a small charter plane to Sleetmute, Alaska (a population of some 50 people) to teach the Sleetmute school’s students how to use small drones for remote sensing—essentially “observing and tracking environmental changes from a distance,” she explains, which is used in instances like natural disasters to spot flooding or wildfires and to record information about hard-to-visit areas.

 “Everybody at NASA is a big nerd,” Powers says. And she can officially say she’s part of that bunch.