From left to right are: Christopher Hall, head of Virginia Tech’s Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Captain Kelley Jessee, and Richard C. Benson, dean of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering.
Air Force Capt Kelley Jessee, who graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in aerospace and ocean engineering (AOE) in 2002, credits her successful career in the U.S. Air Force to a scheduling hiccup during her junior year of high school in Richlands, Va. For her numerous accomplishments, the Virginia Tech College of Engineering named her its Outstanding Young Alumna for 2009.
At Richlands High School, choir and Spanish class were offered at the same time, so Jessee had to choose another class to fill a credit shortage in her schedule. The cheerleader, who had her heart set on being a veterinarian, opted for a new offering at her rural high school: Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.
“I talked to the major in charge and he told me about the program,” Jessee says. “He said my grades were good, and I could apply for a college scholarship in engineering through Air Force ROTC.” Excited by the scholarship possibility and the program’s mission, she fully immersed herself into ROTC. She graduated from high school in 1998. Her choice of college was easy. Her parents, Robert “Tom” Jessee and Barbara Awbrey, attended Virginia Tech in the mid-1970s. Several other aunts and uncles are alumni as well. “I was born and raised a Hokie,” she says. “I remember my mom taught me the fight song for Virginia Tech when I was only four. I’ve been a Hokie my whole life.”
Jessee originally chose civil engineering as a major, but soon after switched to aerospace. She found roads and bridges “boring,” but rockets and airplanes “cool.”
“I actually was worried the Air Force would not let me change concentrations,” she says. “They were thrilled.” When it came time for her to graduate in 2002, Major Dale Van De Ven, the Junior ROTC instructor from Richlands High School, came to Virginia Tech to commission her into the Air Force. “Even as a junior in high school, she was smart enough to know if you’re going to succeed on the road of life, you’ll have to do a lot of pre-planning and hard work,” Major Van De Ven says. “She sticks out in my mind as someone who says ‘I’m going to get it done, and I’m going to get it done right and I’m going to get it done now.’ She is a self-starter, and that is rare in high school students.”
From her rural hometown and then Blacksburg, Jessee was assigned to Los Angles Air Force Base. There, she found herself in one of the nation’s largest metros, with no snow in winter and no turning leaves in fall. She adjusted and soon learned to surf and play guitar. “It’s a great place to live in your early 20s,” she says. The adjustment to Air Force life gave one surprise, “The Air Force was a little more relaxed” compared to cadet life at Tech.
Jessee was first assigned to the Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT) Program, MILSATCOM Systems Wing, Space and Missile Systems Center. She was promoted multiple times in four years, starting as a program office engineer in the Systems Engineering Segment, then serving as the executive officer to the program director, then chief of the Spacecraft Systems Branch and lastly Lasercom test manager. As program office engineer, Jessee led a 100-person team supporting vital systems engineering and integration efforts. She also served as a liaison to the $7 billion TSAT Space Segment and $2 billion TSAT Mission Operating Systems Segment. As the program director’s executive officer, Jessee managed the center’s administrative functions and supervised 10 government and contractor workers. As the Space Systems branch chief, she led more than 20 personnel on a $779 million space vehicle development project and all subsystems design efforts for the $18 billion TSAT program. As Lasercom test manager, she led a 130-person team in the $1.9 billion Lasercom risk reduction test in cooperation with the National Reconnaissance Office and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Labs.
In October 2006, with a move to California’s Edwards AFB, Jessee was assigned to the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron as lead engineer of F-22 Weapons Integration Testing. One year later she was promoted to flight commander of F-22 and F-35 operational testing. In 2007, Jessee worked on the integration of the new Small Diameter Bomb, a low-collateral damage weapon being integrated into the F-22 weapons arsenal. She now provides early operational test preparation and planning for the F-35 flight test program, in addition to her F-22 early operational testing engineering support.
Jessee holds a Level 2 certification in Systems Planning Research Development and Engineering and a Level 1 certification in Program Management and Test and Evaluation from Defense Acquisition University. She was promoted to the rank of captain in 2007 and continues her education. She is taking an online master’s course in engineering management through the University of Wisconsin Platteville. She plans to leave the military this summer and enter the private sector as a project manager in the San Diego metro. “She’ll succeed wherever she goes,” Van De Ven says. “She works too hard and is too conscientious not too succeed. I’d hire her in a heartbeat.”
Jessee has won several Air Force honors, including the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron Company Grade Officer of the Quarter, twice in 2007, Edwards Air Force Base Tennant Unit Company Grade Officer of the Quarter, Space and Missile System Center Outstanding Scientist Team Award in 2005 and the TSAT System Junior Company Grade Officer of the Year in 2005.
“Part of me is surprised and another part of me isn’t,” says Barbara Awbrey, Capt. Jessee’s mother and assistant director of disability services at Virginia Tech, about her daughter’s 2009 Outstanding Young Alumna award. “She is so ambitious. She excels in everything she does.” Ms. Awbrey adds that her daughter demonstrates not only intelligence and mastering of engineering skills, but vibrant human warmth and a sense of humor. “She represents a well-rounded person, which is good for the military, good for Virginia Tech and good for engineering.”
Van De Ven agrees. “Kelley established a legacy that exists to this day at the rural high school, setting the bar for future students who face the local jobs choices of coal mining, working at a prison or for the county school system.”
Despite her many professional accomplishments, Jessee says she is most proud of advising younger Air Force officers on career goals and other matters. She credits her mentorship to the “leadership skills I learned in the Virginia Tech Corp of Cadets. If it had not been for that amazing program and what it offers, I don’t feel I would have been as prepared for my life and career. I learned so much, it’s invaluable. I can’t put a price on that education.”
Nor can she put a price on that scheduling snafu which led her to the door of Van de Ven. “I think about that every day,” she says. “It was God’s divine intervention in my life. God knew that I needed to have this experience and that I needed this education. I didn’t know. If that hadn’t happened to me, I don’t think I would have studied engineering and I would have always questioned my intelligence.”