Alumni Engagement Medal Award 2022
Systems Test Engineer, Ball Aerospace
Broomfield, CO
Career Path
Jannine Vela-Rouw (EngrPlus’18) is currently a Systems Test Engineer at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO where her work focuses on assembling, integrating, and testing various satellite mechanisms for National Defense programs. She received her B.S. in Engineering Plus with an emphasis in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from CU Boulder in 2018 where she was heavily involved in CU's Society of Women Engineers (SWE) section, and a frequent member and advocate of the Broadening Opportunity through Leadership and Diversity (BOLD) Center. One of Vela-Rouw’s formative experiences as a student at CU Boulder was her involvement in the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC), where she worked on several student designed and student-built projects such as high-altitude balloon and suborbital sounding rocket payloads as well as a CubeSat mission. She is passionate about STEM outreach and diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the workplace. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her family and friends, training for triathlons, and exploring the outdoors with her husband and their pups, Mochi and Kepler.
Contributions to The Engineering Plus Department over the past year
Vela-Rouw has always been a very active volunteer with Engineering Plus and the CU College of Engineering. Starting with her undergraduate days, Vela-Rouw was a leader with the Broadening Opportunities through Leadership and Diversity (BOLD) Center and the student sections of Society of Women Engineers (SWE), President's Leadership Class (PLC), and Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC). She was also an active volunteer for our Engineering Plus degree program and remains active to this day. Currently, as an Engineer with Ball Aerospace, she still finds the time to judge every semester's Engineering Plus Design Expo for first-year through junior level projects and shows up for every Engineering Plus alumni and current student event (several per year). Over the past two hybrid years, Vela-Rouw has continued to judge the Expo, showed up for networking events, and has mentored any current students that have been sent her way, even if it is online. Additionally in the past two years, Vela-Rouw has joined several panels of young professional engineers, and K-12 teacher professional development workshops offered through Engineering Plus - for hundreds of teachers across the nation. She has also been an outstanding member of the Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) Board for the College of Engineering and has spoken at several student events over the past couple of years.