Celebrated for their accomplishments in their respective fields and their service and support of the university, Cal State Fullerton is recognizing four Titan alumni and one honorary alumna on Feb. 26 as the 2022 Vision & Visionaries award recipients. Established in 1994 and in its 25th year, the awards are the highest honors presented by CSUF to alumni and community supporters. Over the course of the semester, the Register will profile each of this year’s honorees and highlight their achievements and contributions to their profession and the community.

Lauren DuCharme knew she wanted to be an engineer long before she knew what an engineer was.

The Cal State Fullerton alumna’s journey to becoming a systems engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with her commitment to the Titan community while attending CSUF, have earned DuCharme the university’s 2022 Vision & Visionaries Recent Graduate Award.

Curious from a young age, DuCharme always loved tinkering. As a way to fight boredom, her father would give her random items from the garage, and she would put them together to see what she could build.

“When I was younger, I remember very distinctly talking to my uncle, and he said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and I said I just want to know how everything works,” DuCharme said.

“And he said, ‘That’s what an engineer does.’ From that day forward, I wanted to be an engineer.”

Fifth-grade science introduced DuCharme to the world of planets, satellites and space shuttles, and it all came together for her as clear as a starry night sky — she wanted to build things that soared into space. As an elementary school student, she began to verbalize that she wanted to work for JPL.

“It started early and never went away,” said DuCharme of her love for space and spaceflight. “Even through high school, I would tell people I want to build spacecraft for JPL. I want to work for NASA.”

After graduating from Garden Grove’s Pacifica High School in 2010, DuCharme’s path to her dream job led her to CSUF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. When she arrived for orientation, she was the only female student in her group.

Undeterred, DuCharme dove headfirst into CSUF and all the mechanical engineering program had to offer, including serving as a Peer Mentor for the school’s Women in Computer Science and Engineering program and leading the Titan Rover team, a campus multidisciplinary project in which students research, design, manufacture and test their own version of a Mars Exploration Rover for competition.

During her time on campus, DuCharme also served as a Titan Ambassador and an Orientation Leader. And when she felt the engineering department lacked a space-focused curriculum, she worked with the dean to reinstate classes such as Space and Rocket Engineering into the course offering.

When DuCharme learned that CSUF participated in a grant program that provided a select number of students from local universities the opportunity for an internship position at JPL, she jumped at the chance.

And after months of nervous waiting, DuCharme finally got the phone call that changed her life.

“Someone at (JPL’s) Extreme Environment Robotics group said, ‘How would you like to spend a summer researching potential Mars sample return?’ DuCharme said. “I was ecstatic.”

DuCharme spent the summer of 2014 before her final year at CSUF interning for JPL, and they were so impressed with her work that they kept her on through the completion of her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2015 and her master’s in astronautical engineering from USC in 2017. Post-graduation, JPL hired her full time.

As a member of the Mars 2020 Mission Team that sent the rover Perseverance to the red planet, DuCharme found a love for fault protection where, in layman’s terms, her job is to determine all the ways something could break and then try to figure out to prevent them.

“It really forces you to be curious, think of those really interesting, weird things that happen and try to figure out how to solve them before they ever happen,” DuCharme said. “It’s complicated, but it’s fun.”

DuCharme’s most memorable moment to date as a fault protection systems engineer was on Feb. 18, 2021, when she heard the words “Tango Delta Nominal” over her headset, confirming Perseverance’s touchdown on Mars. She has since transitioned to JPL’s Europa Clipper Mission in preparation for a 2024 launch to Jupiter, and her future goals include serving as a Mission Control Flight Director.

“It would be incredible to one day get to be the one at the front of the room, whether it’s on a launch day or a landing day or a regular day during operations,” DuCharme said. “That’s where I hope my career eventually takes me.”

DuCharme’s journey to the career she always envisioned for herself has admittedly provided her with moments of self-reflection. To her, it’s just her story. But when she looks back and recounts all she has accomplished in the last few years, it hits her how many fascinating things she has been a part of. To be honored by her alma mater with an award that brings recognition not only to her field but to the program that helped get her there is celestial icing on the cake.

“Cal State Fullerton always felt like home from Day 1,” DuCharme said. “I think receiving this award is a great way to be welcomed back home after so many years. I hope other people find a home in Cal State Fullerton, or whatever university they choose, like I did, because I think that made such a big difference for getting where I wanted to be.”

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