Former Oakville student Matthew Fogle returned to share the secrets of his success as an aerospace engineer with Mr. Richard Kling’s Introduction to Engineering class. On Jan. 7, Fogle, a 2014 Oakville graduate, returned to give a presentation to Kling’s Introduction to Engineering class.

Fogle talked to the students about his successes at Missouri S&T, where he is studying to be a rocket engineer and is on their rocket squad. He brought some of the rockets that his team has been building with him to show to students and let them hold. He also showed the students videos of different types of rocket launches with his team and of large scale NASA rocket launches. At the end of the Intro to Engineering course, students build and launch their own rocket. Fogle also talked to the students about why the rocket the year before failed and what changes they can make this year to prevent this from happening.

Fogle now attends Missouri S&T as an aerospace engineering major and the propulsions lead for the school rocket team, which is making their own motors and rocket fuel this year. When Fogle was attending OHS, he took all of the Project Lead the Way engineering classes as well as robotics, which he said got him interested in rocket engineering.

“When I was five years old I had a VHS tape called Planes and Trains that I watched all of the time, and that’s what got me interested in planes and aerospace engineering,” said Fogle. He then said that once he was in school he decided that rockets were “a little bit cooler”, and that is how he decided that he wanted to go into rocket science.

Because of Fogle’s return, students were offered some insight into what it is like to be a rocket engineer and whether this is a career they want to pursue.