GOLDENDALE, WASHINGTON: Standout senior Kimberly Morales Cortes is photographed inside the Goldendale Observatory in Goldendale, Washington on July 9th, 2026. High performing student from The Dalles. She will be attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona in August. During her high school career she won numerous awards such as the monthly Youth of the Gorge award her first year of high school. She was the “Hawk” of All Trades award by the entire student body which is given to someone who is involved in many things at school. She also won the Stephen “Hawking” Award for being good at math and science. She was in the robotics team which won the VEX Oregon Championships three years in a row (2023-2025). She was involved in Leadership clubs, Symphonic/Jazz/Pep and Marching bands, STEM Club, VEX V5 Robotics, drama department Juntos club and National Honors Society all four years while attending The Dalles High School. Before heading off to college in Arizona she is working two jobs at Casa El Mirador, where she is a hostess and busser as well as working at the 4H OSU Extension at CGCC. She is planning on majoring in Aerospace engineering with a minor in either astronomy or astrophysics or space science. As for her dreams and aspirations for her future she says she can’t wait for the day when “I become part of something greater than myself. When I can be a part of a diverse team of people all working together, hopefully at NASA, to discover ways to build a better, brighter, more sustainable tomorrow.” “I want to dedicate my life to research,” she continues. “There is so much we don’t yet know about the cosmos and the difference ways to navigate it.” (Photo by Helen H. Richardson)
GOLDENDALE, WASHINGTON: Standout high school senior Kimberly Morales Cortes is photographed inside the Goldendale Observatory in Goldendale, Washington on July 9th, 2026. She is wearing space themed earrings that were a gift to her from her grandfather. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson)
GOLDENDALE, WASHINGTON: Standout senior Kimberly Morales Cortes is photographed inside the Goldendale Observatory in Goldendale, Washington on July 9th, 2026. High performing student from The Dalles. She will be attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona in August. During her high school career she won numerous awards such as the monthly Youth of the Gorge award her first year of high school. She was the “Hawk” of All Trades award by the entire student body which is given to someone who is involved in many things at school. She also won the Stephen “Hawking” Award for being good at math and science. She was in the robotics team which won the VEX Oregon Championships three years in a row (2023-2025). She was involved in Leadership clubs, Symphonic/Jazz/Pep and Marching bands, STEM Club, VEX V5 Robotics, drama department Juntos club and National Honors Society all four years while attending The Dalles High School. Before heading off to college in Arizona she is working two jobs at Casa El Mirador, where she is a hostess and busser as well as working at the 4H OSU Extension at CGCC. She is planning on majoring in Aerospace engineering with a minor in either astronomy or astrophysics or space science. As for her dreams and aspirations for her future she says she can’t wait for the day when “I become part of something greater than myself. When I can be a part of a diverse team of people all working together, hopefully at NASA, to discover ways to build a better, brighter, more sustainable tomorrow.” “I want to dedicate my life to research,” she continues. “There is so much we don’t yet know about the cosmos and the difference ways to navigate it.” (Photo by Helen H. Richardson)
She was about seven years old when she fell in love with the universe. She was browsing the tables with her classmates at a school book fair, "I remember just walking around, and finding an astronomy book telling me about the different stars and planets, how they worked together, and the life of a star. I immediately fell in love with it,” says Kimberly Morales-Cortez, from The Dalles. “I remember taking it home and reading it to my parents.”
Kimberly was so in love with her new book she ended up asking her parents for more books about stars and planets. Soon, she found reading about the universe wasn't enough. She wanted to discover worlds of her own. Armed with her notebook and imagination, she would fill page after page with her own stories. "I'd write sci-fi stories with information I would find,” she recalls with a smile. “For one of our art projects, we had to make a story and color it. I made a sci-fi book about these astronauts who went to Mars, and then I talked about the different-colored sunsets."
Today as a first-generation Mexican-American, Kimberly is preparing to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. "I'll be studying aerospace engineering and minoring in astronomy and astrophysics."
GOLDENDALE, WASHINGTON: Standout high school senior Kimberly Morales Cortes is photographed inside the Goldendale Observatory in Goldendale, Washington on July 9th, 2026. She is wearing space themed earrings that were a gift to her from her grandfather. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson)
Kimberly’s was born with so much curiosity. She was the kind of child who dug into the world with her hands first. She buried time capsules in her family’s yard and cut up flowers for her imaginary potions. Many parents might have thought, ‘How can we redirect this energy into a cleaner arts and crafts?’ But Kimberly’s parents embraced her love for learning and found ways to nurture her curiosity.
In the summers, they would make sure she got to spend a lot of time with her grandparents. Her grandparents loved the outdoors, and it was a great place for Kimberly to explore. They spent time together hiking, fishing, and learning how to read animal tracks. She walked trails with her grandparents for hours and collected rocks along the way. Her family leaned into her questions by turning their outside experiences into lessons in observation.
Kimberly traces much of her direction to science, from those early environments her family created and embraced for her. The same child who once mixed “potions” in the yard and planted many time capsules is now growing into a young woman who designs robots, leads teams, and is preparing to study aerospace engineering in college.
“My parents are really proud of me, and they support me,” she says of her parents intentionally nurturing her passion.
Kimberly has earned multiple scholarships this year and has goals to contribute to space exploration through NASA. However, navigating the path to college has brought challenges beyond grades and applications. Through the ASPIRE program, Kimberly found an important mentor in Bill. As she navigated college applications and scholarship deadlines, he helped her explore career paths, and encouraged her to pursue both aerospace engineering and astronomy. Bill also spent time in reviewing her scholarship essays before she submitted them. "He helped me figure out what I wanted to go to school for," Kimberly says. "He helped me realize that I could do both."
She credits her friends for teaching her how to keep moving forward when challenges felt overwhelming. "They were always one of my key motivators," she says. "I owe a lot of who I am to them."
Community has always mattered to Kimberly. Throughout high school, she immersed herself in leadership, serving as class treasurer, vice president, president, and secretary. She helped organize homecoming, school assemblies, community cleanups, and spirit weeks.
“I was involved in a lot of clubs, like STEM Club. We went to elementary schools all four of my years in high school. We displayed mini science experiments to them. Sometimes we built catapults, and recently we did a little pH experiment where you put cabbage juice, then lime, and it turns pink. Then you put baking soda and water, and it turns blue, and kind of explain to them how different pHs would affect things." Kimberly smiled, "It was just like bringing a science fair to the elementary schools to hopefully excite them about science and STEM, to hopefully spark their interests."
She also spent all four years of high school on her school's award-winning VEX Robotics team, qualifying for the VEX Robotics World Championship every year. During her senior year, the team faced significant challenges, including the loss of their coach and financial hurdles.
Together, they worked hard to get there. "Over spring break, we did yard work, we talked to families, we went to businesses and told them our story, and through doing all that, we were able to raise almost $20,000." This made it possible for them to compete at the World Championship in St. Louis and secure second place.
"I remember at the beginning of freshman year there was about five or six girls whenever I went to compete at competitions all over Oregon, that we would be friends with." She then said, " I realized over the years, that some of the girls would drop robotics or just not participate anymore. I asked them why, and they were like, because they didn't feel comfortable in a male-dominated environment."
"I feel like that's what made Evelyn and I stick with robotics so long, because we were there for each other, and we advocated for each other. Whenever we go to competitions, sometimes you get the sense ‘because I'm a girl we're not taken seriously,’ but we really stuck next to each other."
Although she watched the other girls experience this, she is equally quick to recognize the supportive teammates and mentors who believed in her at her school.
Kimberly still dreams the way she did as a seven-year-old. She imagines helping build spacecraft capable of carrying humanity farther than ever before. She dreams of designing technology for future missions and perhaps one day becoming an astronaut herself. If given the chance to travel into deep space in pursuit of discovery, she wouldn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to answer the next question.
The universe continues to invite Kimberly to do what she has done since she was seven years old: remain curious, keep exploring, and never stop asking questions. "I've always been curious about what's out there," she says. "I'm excited to learn what I don't know. My goal is to become something that's greater than myself," she says. "To be part of a team who works together to explore, to discover what's unknown."
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