When a tractor, or a pickup, or even a post hole digger
breaks down on an isolated ranch in eastern Montana, there is little chance
that outside help or the right spare parts will be available for repairs. Those
who grow up in rural environments learn that problem solving with limited
resources is only accomplished with hard work, ingenuity, and grit.
These are a few of the same ingredients that make excellent
scientists and engineers, and Dakotah Rusley is no exception. His family has
farmed and ranched for the last four generations about 35 miles outside Baker,
Montana. This upbringing proved to be a solid foundation for an engineering
career.
“The tenacity needed to persevere through a tough situation
where you might not have all the answers, but you figure it out—that’s what we
do here,” says Rusley. “This is one of the advantages Mines students
have.”
But Rusley’s success is one that almost wasn’t. When he was
a senior in high school a guidance counselor told him he’d never succeed at a
science and engineering university. The advisor warned the fast-paced study and
challenging curriculum were just too difficult for a ranch kid to handle.
Thankfully, he didn’t listen.
“I decided to come to
Mines mostly out of stubbornness,” he laughs. Rusley found a place at Mines
studying computer engineering. The small class sizes felt like home. “I by no
means came from a prestigious school, but Mines still gave me the means to follow
my dreams,” he says.
Dreams don’t come true easily. Rusley cites the importance
of perseverance and persistence when it comes to success in any engineering
discipline. “In my junior year I sent
out 731 internship applications, and I got denied for all of them. I came close
to quitting after that,” he says. “But I’m glad I didn’t.” He applied for the
NASA Pathways Internship four times before finally landing a spot in 2017. The
ten-day annual window sees about 150,000 applicants. Despite beating the odds,
Rusley maintains the kind of humility common among those with rural roots. He
refuses to take all the credit for his successes. Instead, he points to the
professors, small class sizes, and hands-on curriculum at Mines that helped
shape his development and encourage him along the way.
“While it hasn’t been easy, it’s really cool to see all the
hard work realized,” he says. Hard work is part of the fabric of rural America;
and so is another key ingredient—ingenuity. Rusley gives praise to the culture
at Mines that supports creative problem solving and outside-the-box thinking.
“That renegade cowboy attitude is kind of fostered here,” he says with a
laugh. To illustrate this, he points to
an experience during his junior year on the Mines Moonrockers team. The annual
robotics competition at NASA challenges universities to build the best
off-world mining robot. “The team that got first place had a robot worth tens
of thousands of dollars,” Rusley says. “One single component on their machine
was basically worth more than our entire robot,” he adds. “We took second place
with $150 worth of components we bought off Amazon, and NASA officials were
blown away at this,” he says. “But, that’s what makes School of Mines graduates so valuable. We are used to an environment where
you don’t have millions of dollars to solve a problem; you have to use your
brain.”
Rusley’s brain is in full use at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
following his graduation in December of 2018, but he is not leaving his alma
mater completely behind in his new career. He is one of the founding members of
the Mines CubeSat Team and will continue to work with the student team and
graduate researchers alike to help Mines become the first university in South
Dakota to launch a small satellite in the coming years. He also plans on
serving as a sponsor and technical adviser for future senior design and
research projects at the university.