NASA Astronaut and USD alumnus Matthew Dominick Returns to Campus for Homecoming Weekend
Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering graduate talks about his experiences at USD and preparing for future space flight
In his first official visit back to his alma mater, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick ’05 (BS/BA) offered some salient advice to current Toreros: dream big and never be afraid of failure.
“You can afford to make mistakes your first couple of years of college — this is the place to do it,” said Dominick, who majored in electrical engineering with minors in both physics and math. “It took a couple of years for me to really narrow my focus. The converse of that, though, is that I learned a lot, I got to see a bunch of things and I was in so many different clubs. This is the place to learn and explore and figure out who you are.”
Along with meeting with various student groups around campus, Dominick was the special guest of “Toreros in Space,” a homecoming event hosted by the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering that featured a meet-and-greet brunch with the USD community and a live one-on-one interview inside the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice Theater with engineering dean Chell Roberts, PhD. He also made an appearance during halftime of the homecoming football game against Presbyterian with USD President James T. Harris III, DEd.
“It’s great to be back at USD,” said Dominick. “It’s been 17 years — I’ve been back a couple of times, but obviously not in my astronaut costume. It’s great to see the student body doing their things and the incredible new laboratories that are here for engineering.”
Dominick is one of 12 members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. Following graduation from USD, Dominick earned a Master of Science in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School and then graduated from US Naval Test Pilot School.
He has more than 1,600 hours of flight time, 400 carrier landings and has flown 61 combat missions.
During his time on campus, Dominick marveled at the new learning spaces, even commenting on his jealousy for the plethora of resources available to current college students.
“I’d love to go right back into their shoes today and be back in the academic world,” said Dominick. “I miss it a lot.”
As a current NASA astronaut, Dominick is one of 18 members of the Artemis Team, a project slated to send astronauts back to the moon beginning in 2024. Fellow USD alumnus Jonathan Kim ’12 (BA) is also a member of the team.
“Artemis is an international effort to go back to the moon, and to go back to the moon to stay,” Dominick explained. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. To me, that’s what Artemis is about — it’s building the infrastructure to go to the moon to stay and to build lunar bases and learn how to operate somewhere other than our own planet so that we can move ourselves to Mars.”
Mentally preparing for the eventual opportunity to leave earth on a course for the moon takes a particular mindset, one Dominick has been preparing for daily. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, he said.
“It’s important when you are working towards a big goal to take a chunk of each day, a specific block of time, when you learn something new. It’s taking little steps to progress each day. At my core, I’m a very curious person and always trying to learn something new is what drives me. When my kids go to bed, I go into my garage shop and try to learn something new.”
A USD education — especially in the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering — is unique because it combines the liberal arts with technical aspects to create a well-rounded individual. It’s a distinctive academic experience that prepares USD graduates to both develop and share solutions with the wider world; a critical skill set that Dominick truly values and appreciates.
“You can design the most incredible thing in the world, but if you can’t communicate it and relate it to other people, if you don’t have an understanding of different cultures and religions and where different people come from, the thing that you built will never go anywhere,” he said.
Along with the curriculum at USD, Dominick acknowledged the mentors he has had in his life that said the right thing at the right time to help move him forward. His hope is that his message to current students may one day serve in the same capacity.
“I told them the things I did right and the things I did wrong,” he said. “It’s great to come back and maybe, there’s a small chance I was the person that said something to them that helped them in their lives.”
— Story and photos by Matthew Piechalak, videos by Elena Gomez and Alé Delgado