Won’t you be my neighbor? Auburn Engineering alumni build close community in Huntsville

Did you ever have a childhood dream of growing up and living next door to your best friend? A group of Auburn alumni have made that dream a reality.

The eight post-grads, mostly graduates from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, all live within a few houses of one another on the same street in Harvest, Alabama near Huntsville.

“Everything an engineer could want is right here in town,” said Lindsey Davis, ’21 aerospace engineering.

Four of the group – Davis and her husband, Carter, Grant Turner, and Jackson Treese, all ’21 aerospace engineering – met while participating in the Auburn Rocketry Association, ironically enough, at a competition in Huntsville. The team designs and builds rockets for competitions across the nation.

“Joining the rocketry association ended up being the most rewarding thing I did in my college experience,” said Davis, an aerospace engineer at Dynetics. “I started, knowing absolutely nothing about rocketry or power tools, and ended up being the president my senior year. That was all because of other students who invested their time in making sure the new students were learning and contributing. I got to travel with the team and meet all types of people, including my husband.”

Turner’s wife, Allison, a 2021 chemistry education and chemistry graduate, is a high school engineering teacher. She knew Steven Arnsparger, ’19 computer science, and Matthew Glines, ’19 mechanical engineering, from another student organization at Auburn and everyone got to know each other in Huntsville.

“By chance, we were looking at houses at the same time,” Davis recalled. “It was not our original intention to look in the same location, but as we all started narrowing down areas and prices, we all started being interested in the same neighborhood. That’s when we started to ask, ‘would it be weird if we all moved into the same neighborhood…or would it be awesome?’" 

The verdict? Awesome.

“Need to borrow a baking tray? Somebody's definitely got one,” said Glines, a junior flight test engineer with Torch Technologies. “What about some obscure or expensive tool? Odds are good one of us has one that we can share. And feeling bored? Somebody else likely is too and you can get together quickly. Having a neighborhood full of your friends is truly a rarity and such a joy.”

As engineers, most of the group has numerous reasons to stay put in Huntsville. Treese, a flight test engineer at ERC, said Huntsville was the perfect spot to settle post-grad due to proximity to family, ample career opportunities and, of course, his friends.

“I get to fly on Army helicopters for work – which is something I never thought I'd get to do – and then I come home and get to hang out with all of my friends,” Treese said. “Whether it's some event in town, a movie night or just helping work on someone's car, I get to spend so much time with people who are basically family to me at this point. I couldn't ask for a better lifestyle than that. 

The group gets together each year for a big Christmas gift exchange, ‘Friendsgiving’ dinner, graduation parties, wedding showers and Star Trek watch parties. And they’re around for the other moments, too. When each person moved in, the group got together and built a fence for their yard.

“People say that college is the best time of your life, and I think a lot of that is that you have a built-in community,” Davis said. “You get to see your friends in class and at extracurriculars and you’re never apart from them for too long. We decided it would be fun if we just kept that going and built that kind of community in the ‘real’ world.

“This all started as part of the Auburn Family,” she added. “We didn’t know that much about each other, other than the fact that we all went to Auburn and all have some of the same interests. Keeping those relationships going has been incredible.”

Despite the sitcom-like nature of their neighborhood, no one is barging in on each other daily. They can put those fences to good use when needed.

“Having our own homes means we have as much privacy and independence as we want, but when the only degree of separation is a walk across the street, you never have to be alone if you don’t want to be,” Turner said.

Arnsparger and his wife, Carly, a ’19 graphic design graduate, didn’t know what their long-term plan was when they moved to Huntsville. But they do now.

“To be honest, Huntsville was originally intended as a jumping off place to move somewhere else,” Arnsparger said. “Now that we have a community around us along with me hitting my stride in my career, my wife and I can't imagine that we would want to move to another city. As we all get older and our lives change, it’s nice to know that we’ll have a group of people that will be there to help each other out and one day raise children in an environment where they get to experience community. I truly wouldn't have it any other way.”