Administration
Rosanne Altstatt, Ph.D.
Director of Leading Women Toward Space Careers
altstatt@purdue.edu
Rosanne Altstatt is our program director and also serves as the Associate Dean for Community and Engagement in the John Martinson Honors College. She was brought to the Honors College from Purdue’s School of Visual and Performing Arts where she was a Visiting Scholar. Rosanne has worked internationally as a curator, writer and the director of several art institutions that specialize in media art. She researched the media art institution in our information-filled atmosphere for her Ph.D. in Art and Media Studies from Carl-von-Ossietzky University, wrote about early video art for her M.A. in Art History from University of Cologne, and received a B.A. in Art History and English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
L. Allison Roberts, Ph.D.
Program Manager
allisonroberts@purdue.edu
L. Allison Roberts is the program manager for the new JMHC program, Leading Women Toward Space Careers. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom, an M.A. in Political Science (Purdue University) and B.A. in History and Political Science (Purdue University). Her qualitative Ph.D. research, Life after traumatic injury: narratives of embodiment and identity of United Kingdom ex-service personnel, explored the life stories of ex-service personnel who experienced a traumatic injury (such as limb loss, hearing loss, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, or blindness) and were subsequently medically discharged.
She has worked for the university for over a decade. Dr. Roberts' previous experiences include an internship for the Deputy Administrator at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., and being a Visiting Scholar in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
Additionally, Roberts co-taught the Honors College course, Security, Technology, and Society, with Dr. Dwaine Jengelley, in Spring 2021 and 2022. This course engaged students in collaborative, team-based research on topical security issues to create White Papers and Policy Briefs. In the Fall of 2020, Dr. Roberts piloted the Honors College course entitled Centuries of War: Knowing War through Shared Experiences. The course included sources—specifically memoirs, poems, letters, and (auto)biographies—from the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alexandra (Alex) Kemp, Ph.D.
Program Liaison (Academic Year 2022-23)
Dr. Alexandra (Alex) Kemp earned a Ph.D. in Technology, Aviation Human Factors in the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology/Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, with a focus on Space Human Factors. She is currently an adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University teaching space human factors for the Worldwide campus. Kemp is interested in working with the next Moon and Mars crews to get them to the surface of each and back safely.
At Purdue, she researched human factors within the aviation field. Alex's dissertation, titled “Evaluation Modeling for Energy Management in General Aviation Airplanes,” focussed on energy management within general aviation airplanes. Alex’s previous internships include one with Lockheed Martin, three with Honeywell Aerospace, and three with NASA.
Kemp joined the Leading Women Toward Space Careers program because she feels that oftentimes working in space careers can feel limited, intimidating, there is not enough information or lack of information available about the field (such as working in engineering and not knowing much about the medical side of space), and ever evolving. Looking back on her undergraduate years, she reflected that she did not have a mentor or anyone cheering her on. Alex Kemp faced several obstacles that a mentor could have recognized or even provided guidance. She aims to help mitigate these issues for women so that their process working in the space industry is welcoming and encouraging.
Students may reach out to Dr. Kemp via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ackemp
