M.I.T., 1991
• 1989 Academic All-America® Third Team
Jennifer Trosper was inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America® Hall of Fame in 2001.
Jennifer (Harris) Trosper’s life took her from rural Fostoria, Ohio all the way to the surface of Mars. Trosper worked as the mission manager for the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)’s Spirit rover on Mars, a long way from her humble beginnings on an Ohio farm.
Trosper grew up listening to her father tell stories about missiles that he worked to develop in the 1950s, so her interest in space exploration was piqued at a young age. By the time she graduated from high school, Trosper knew that she wanted to become an engineer and enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
While at MIT, Trosper earned four varsity letters in volleyball and one in softball. She was captain of the 1989 volleyball team that competed in the NCAA Division 3 tournament and was also named an Academic All-America that year. She was also a member of the sorority Alpha Chi Omega.
Trosper graduated from MIT in 1990 with a degree in aerospace and engineering and then attended graduate school at the University of Southern California. While at USC she continued to play volleyball on a club team and also lent her skills as coach of a local high school volleyball team.
Trosper began her career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., as a subsystems engineer and worked her way up through the ranks to become the mission manager for the Mars rover. Her work entailed overseeing all aspects of the 90-day mission in 2004 to discover if there was ever life on Mars, including operating and steering the rover.
Trosper is married to Air Force Captain Randy Trosper.