The Mustang Monthly
The Official Newsletter of SE-IV
Executive Master’s Program
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics – Ft. Worth
The Mustang Monthly
The Official Newsletter of SE-IV
September 2004
From the Class President
Fellow ClassmatesDO NOT FORGET THAT THURSDAY OCTOBER 7TH IS SMU SHIRT DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you have not paid AMS for tuition, please pay them by the means provided in their letter mailed to you
as soon as possible. If you have not received your reimbursement please let me know.
I have received several suggestions for spending our social allotment. Please submit any ideas you
may have by next class. We will discuss them on Saturday during lunch.
Thanks to those who submitted profiles for September mostly in a timely fashion and those in October
who had them turned in early!!
Other than the profiles, this newsletter is short and sweet. I am lucky to get this one out on the last day
of the month!!
Should you have any questions, concerns, or ideas feel free to contact me. Until then, I remain
Sincerely Yours,
Johnathan Foster
SE-IV Class President
x32679
Upcoming
Events
September
Birthdays
Oct 7 – SMU SHIRT DAY!!!
Sep 7 – Chris Anderson
Oct 8 – Class
Sep 9 – Kerlin Josaphat
Oct 9 – Class
Sep 18 – DC Foster
September Profile One:
James Kokoles
James Kokoles was born on March 22, 1979 in Augusta, GA. From the age of
one, until the time he moved to Bedford, Texas at the age of ten, James lived
in a variety of states including North Carolina, Washington, Virginia,
California, Nebraska, Florida and Pennsylvania.
James attended high school at Euless Trinity, from which he graduated in
1997. While attending high school, James worked part time as a carhop at a
Sonic Drive-In, where he met his future wife, Jenna Emmons, at the ripe old age
of sixteen.
After graduating high school, James took a semester off to work full time at
an insurance company. After six months of performing data entry for the
insurance center, James was more than ready to start college. James attended
UTA in Arlington, where he majored in Information Systems. He graduated with
honors in May, 2002. During his final semester at UTA, James got a job as an
intern working software development for the Systems Engineering core department
at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth.
Upon graduation of college, James was offered a full-time position as a
Reliability and Maintainability engineer on the JSF program, which he willingly
accepted. For the last two and a half years James has been working on the JSF
R&M integration team where his primary responsibilities include overseeing the
integration of R&M related IT products and the configuration management of LCN
and R&M prediction data.
In his personal time, James enjoys lifting weights, running and keeping up
with current events and sports. He was married to his wife, Jenna, in November
of 2002 in Xcaret, Mexico. While only married for a little less than two
years, the two have been together for seven years, and have known each other
for over nine. Last September, the couple purchased a moderately sized, three
bedroom house in Keller. They currently do not have any kids, but do plan to
some time foreseeable in the future. Before having children, James would like
to do some traveling, and his long term goals include opening his on personal
fitness gym in the D/FW area or coaching junior high/high school football.
September Profile Two:
Henry Nguyen
Henry was born in Saigon, Vietnam during the Vietnam war. His native name
was Huy Nguyen. He is the oldest of four children. His parents were educated
people. He grew up in Vietnam and lived there until he was 21 years old; that
was in 1989 when his family decided to escape from Vietnam.
His parents planned the escape eight years earlier by pretending to be real
fisherman. The time came for his family to carry out the plan one night in
April of 1989. Within a few hours into the escape they were confronted and
almost got caught. The next morning they were able to get to sea and by noon,
they were chased by a patrol boat and shot at. Henry was the pilot to guide
the boat with thirty-four people on board. The chase lasted 45 minutes.
Somehow they managed to get away with minimum damage; one person got hit with a
bullet in the leg. After four days and four nights at sea, they made it to a
small island in Indonesia quite exhausted. Ten days later, they were taken to
the refugee camp. There they spent three years of hardship and uncertainty.
They didn’t know how their fate was going to turn out. There was not enough
water and food for everybody. People had to build dams down the streams to
contain water for the whole camp. Still there was not enough water for
everybody since the population of the camp grew so fast year by year. When
Henry got to the camp, there were approximately 1,500 people in camp. When he
left three years later, there were approximately 24,000 people in the camp.
In dealing with all of that, Henry and his family had to go through the
screening procedure to see if they qualified to stay in the third world country
or not. If they failed to qualify, they would be forced to go back to Vietnam.
That was one of the uncertainties that Henry and his family had to deal with.
Finally, they were told that they were qualified and they were accepted by the
American delegation to go to America. That was the happiest moment that anyone
in the camp would want to experience. What a relief! In August of 1991, Henry
and his family were transferred to a refugee camp in the Philippines for six
months to prepare themselves for a new life in the melting pot (USA).
Henry came to America at the end of January 1992. He went to work during the
day and took English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at night. He
registered for the fall semester at Saint Louis Community College in 1992.
After completing his two year degree, Henry transferred to the University of
Missouri-Rolla to continue his education. He majored in Electrical
Engineering. He had a co-op job with General Motors for a year. On July 3rd
of 1997, he took oath to become an American citizen. That was a very proud
moment for him. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical
Engineering in May of 1998.
Henry started working for Raytheon in Aircraft Integration Systems at
Greenville, TX as Electrical Engineer in June of 1998. In November of 2000, he
took an opportunity to join Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, TX as an
electrical engineer and currently works for the F-16 program. He now resides in
Arlington, TX with his wife and son.
Henry enjoys playing soccer, football and volleyball. He was a member of the
championship soccer team in Raytheon’s league.
September Profile Three:
Jatin Patel
Jatin was born on May 17, 1979, in Gujurat, India. He lived with his
grandparents in India till the age of 7. He then moved to the US to live with
his parents in Dallas, Texas, where he lived until going away to college. He
currently lives in Irving, Texas.
He attended Cary Middle School and then Skyline High School, both in Dallas,
Texas. Jatin played soccer in middle school and high school. He also played
basketball as a recreational sport.
He attended the University of Texas at Austin for a year and then
transferred to The University of Texas at Dallas. He started out as a Computer
Science student and then switched to Electrical Engineering in his sophomore
year. In college, Jatin enjoyed watching football, basketball, and soccer
games on TV, hanging out with friends, and playing various intramural sports.
While in college, he interned at MCI Telecommunications and WorldCom. He
graduated in May 2001.
Soon after graduation, Jatin accepted a job at WorldCom in Richardson,
Texas. He worked as a Network Engineer for 2 months. Afterwards, Jatin
returned to school to pursue his Masters in Business Administration at UTD. He
finished three semesters of course work and then accepted a position at
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and moved to Irving in January 2003. He started in
the JSF program as a Systems Engineer in the Flight Control System SEIT IPT and
after three months, he was moved to the F16 Block 60 program. There he worked
as an Embedded Software Engineer in the Flight Controls System Test group.
After 9 months in that program, with the milestone being 1st flight, he moved
back to the JSF program in January 2004. Currently, he works as a Systems
Engineer.
He is an avid sports fan and plays sports, especially basketball as much as he
can. In addition to basketball, Jatin’s hobbies include playing all kinds of
sports, like basketball, football, sand volleyball, and soccer. He also likes
going out with friends to bars/restaurants in Addison, Lower Greenville and the
Downtown/Uptown area in Dallas. He also is a die-hard Dallas Cowboys and
Dallas Mavericks fan.
In the future, Jatin hopes to complete his Masters Degree in Systems
Engineering next year and then one day, complete his MBA. So far, he is
enjoying his time working at Lockheed Martin.
Team
Questions
What do I need to do for subsequent tuition reimbursement?
Begin by downloading Form c-551 from the Corporate forms library. Fill out all of the
personal information. You do not need to resend program and class information. The cost
per class is $2287.50. Submit the statement you should have received from SMU
regarding the amount you owe. You know what you paid for your books, so include that
cost on the form and copy the receipt. I highly recommend you FAX to eliminate any
issues with snail mail or STAMPS. Again you will be over the $5250 mark for the year, so
be sure and add a piece of paper requesting full tax exemption. Last semester some
students in other classes were taxed for some reason, so be sure and include that
document stating this is work related and is tax exempt. If you run into problems, let me
know. If you have questions, contact EFS then contact me with the outcome. Oh, and I
guess it would be good to print your grades from Access and send them, too!
If you have any questions you would like addressed for the next newsletter, please submit to one of the
people below. If you have ideas for social gatherings, ideas for spending out monetary allotment, or want to
volunteer for social events or newsletter work, let Johnathan know. Thanks.
Johnathan Foster
David VonZurmuehlen
Jeremiah Stoker
SE-IV Class President
X 32679
Director of Marketing
SMU School of Engineering
972-473-3475
SE-IV Vice President
X 78821
Disclaimer
The Lockheed Martin Star, the Lockheed Martin logos, F-35
JSF, F-22 Raptor, ADP Skunkworks, and F-16 Falcon are
trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of the
Lockheed Martin Corporation, some in the US Patent and
Trademark Office. All rights reserved.
All product graphics are courtesy of the Lockheed Martin
Corporation (so I think) and may not reflect or fully represent
actual product deliverables.
The SMU Mustang and SMU logos are trademarks of
Southern Methodist University. All rights reserved.