Samantha Snabes (‘06 B.S., B.A. CASL, ‘11 MBA COB) has wanted to be an astronaut for as long as she can remember. And not in the way that many people say that was their childhood dream and then moved on to more practical things. Snabes, now 41, still very much wants to go to space — and in fact, has measured many life choices against whether they will take her closer to that goal. It has led her to do all kinds of bold things. When she was 8 years old, she went to space camp, and after she got home, she cross-referenced the astronaut directory with the “White Pages” and called up any astronauts located in Michigan. A few days later, Tony England, a former astronaut and former dean of UM-Dearborn’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, left her a voicemail. It led to a memorable meeting between the two and some practical advice, “I asked him what I needed to do to become an astronaut and he said, ‘Go to college.’”
As a first-generation student, Snabes said college was often a struggle. The only way to pay for it was to take out a lot of student loans, and she, like many first-gen students, often got tripped up navigating the conventions of the university system. When she transferred to UM-Dearborn, she was encouraged to pick a major and admits she didn’t even know what that was. She said astrophysics, a major the university didn’t offer, and then chose biology based on someone’s suggestion that it might be a good fit given her love of science. Knowing of her ultimate dream, one of her professors suggested she should try to get some research experience, and she found a spot doing bench work in a UM-Ann Arbor startup lab that was working with stem cells. Snabes shined in the lab, at one point making an out-of-the-box observation based on something she had learned while making her younger siblings’ Halloween costumes. It saved the then stalled project, and within a couple years, she and one of the project’s lead investigators would team up to create a biotech company.
