If you want to know what people are really made of, you’ll learn a lot by observing them in their worst moments. For Fatima Soueidan, the collective character of MASA, the student rocketry team, was laid bare during her first year with the team. Everyone was out in New Mexico for the annual Spaceport America Cup — essentially the Super Bowl for collegiate rocketry teams — when the rocket they had been working on for months “rapidly disassembled” shortly after launch. “That’s a nice way of saying it blew up,” Soueidan says, wryly. She can laugh about it now. But at the time, there was no fighting back the tears, and she wasn’t the only one. As the team literally surveyed the wreckage and began processing what had happened, the blame game started. Rather than pointing fingers, though, they were all looking in the mirror. “Everyone was saying, like, ‘This wouldn’t have happened if I had just done this differently,’” she recalls. “Not a single person was looking around, blaming another person or subteam for what had happened.” As the shock wore off and they had a chance to debrief, Soueidan says their collective sadness turned to pride. “Everyone just recognized how hard we worked,” she says. “We were able to take a step back and realize what it took to even build a rocket that made it to the competition.”
It’s not the only story Soueidan can share about the uber-supportive atmosphere that has come to define one of UM-Dearborn’s most successful student-led competition teams — nor is she the only member with a cache of heartwarming memories about the camaraderie and friendship born from countless late nights building rockets. MASA members do movie nights together. They cook and eat together. “If someone wants to have a hang out, everyone is invited,” Soueidan says. Once, while making a food run during one of their annual pilgrimages to New Mexico, she spontaneously decided to buy the local Walmart out of water guns, which turned their team barbecue night into a memory they all now talk about regularly. In a world brimming with cynicism and loneliness, MASA’s earnestness almost sounds alien. But Soueidan says it has changed her life. When she entered college, she says she was “so shy and awkward” and also a little “lost.” “I think I just felt like everyone around me knew what they were doing — even if they didn’t, it seemed like they did,” she says. “It felt like imposter syndrome, where I didn't have enough experience to solve technical problems — even though I was a freshman and that was OK.”
Soueidan wasn’t entirely rudderless. Like many students who are good at math, she was often told that she should consider a major in engineering. And an older cousin who had moved in with her family was actually a mechanical engineering student at UM-Dearborn. More than once, he helped her turn otherwise mundane high school projects into things that spun, lit up and played music. She actually declared her major in electrical engineering right out of the gate — mostly, she says, because mechanical engineering required taking thermal dynamics, a course she’d heard “horror stories” about. But electrical engineering turned out to be a great fit. “I remember the moment I felt like I chose the right major,” she says. “It was first year, second semester. I was taking Engineering 100, and for our final project, we had to design and build a little Mars rover. I was at the MSEL, and I sat there from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. trying to figure out how to make the wheels turn. When I finally did, all the frustration flew out the window. The satisfaction I got in that moment was incredible. Like, I felt like all the stress is worth it when it comes to engineering.”
Her participation with MASA came a little later. A friend of hers who she’d met in one of her courses was a MASA member, and every time the two bumped into each other, her friend would urge her to come to a meeting. Soueidan says her shyness initially held her back — plus, “I live in Dearborn Heights, so I'm next to Detroit, what was I going to do with rockets?” she says. But when she did finally decide to check out a meeting, she immediately fell in love with the team’s good vibes and recognized it as a place “where I could work on myself — and my technical skills.” The first year, she participated as a general member. But as her confidence grew, she took on the role of lead for electrical hardware. In some ways, she says that’s when she really “started learning.” There was no one correct way to build a rocket. There wasn’t even a client supplying specifications, something real-world engineers would typically get if they’re working on a project. If she didn’t know how to do something, she had to look it up, ask her teammates and figure it out. In the beginning, Soueidan says she had a habit of qualifying her leadership with self-deprecating disclaimers. “At first, I felt like I didn’t know enough, which made me feel like I should not be in a leadership position. Like, why should my teammates be asking me questions if I didn’t know? But as time went on, I realized that I wasn’t inexperienced — I was learning in real time, and my role as a leader wasn’t to have every answer, but to listen, ask the right questions and grow alongside my team.”
Soueidan says Senior Design — the two-semester capstone for engineering students — provided a similar experience. Alongside their advisor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Lecturer Michael Putty, Soueidan and her four teammates decided to design and build an inertial navigation system — a self-contained, on-board navigation system that carefully tracks a vehicle’s position and movement independent of external sources like GPS. It was bound to be a challenging project — even if they hadn't decided to make it harder on themselves. “When we were dividing up who would work on what, we decided that if everyone worked on what they were good at, we probably wouldn't learn as much,” she says. So, like a baseball team that sends its catcher out to the pitching mound and its third basemen out to left field, they all decided to take on something they’d never done before. For Soueidan, that meant heading up the design of the system’s printed circuit board — those ubiquitous thin green plates that form the foundation of basically all electronic devices. She says she’d always assumed learning about PCBs was beyond her. But she dove in and ended up loving it. It took a little longer than the two semesters officially allotted for Senior Design, but they eventually got their inertial navigation system working and loaded on MASA’s latest rocket. In fact, under Soueidan’s guidance as electrical lead, this was the first year that the team had fully working electronics, air brakes and livestream video, so they could watch their launch from the point of view of the rocket. Lately, she’s even been leading team workshops in PCB design and thinking of making a career of it. “I’m basically applying for any jobs that have ‘PCB design’ in the description,” she says.
Speaking of: Soueidan says her job search has been a tough one, as companies have been reacting to economic uncertainties and pulling back on hiring, especially of new college graduates. She says it’s been pretty discouraging, but she’s keeping the faith that she’ll eventually land something that’s a good fit. “At one point, I stopped applying. But I talked with Dr. Putty, he talked me through it, and it brought back my motivation to keep looking. He helped me understand that it’s not me personally. It’s just a tough time for everyone,” she says. In the meantime, she’s savoring the moment of making it to graduation as someone who believes in herself a lot more than she used to, and is even inspiring those coming up behind her — including her two younger brothers. She thinks her college experience might have had a little something to do with the fact that one of them is already in the Henry Ford Early College program studying automotive engineering. And Soueidan and her youngest brother regularly bond over their shared love of putting together Lego and mini electronics kits. No longer lost, Soueidan has found her footing. She’s even setting the tone.
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Story by Lou Blouin
