The Educational Frontier

Some of the most oft-overlooked contributions NASA makes are in the classroom. For decades, NASA has been a partner in educating America's youth at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels. The following activities are just a sampling of NASA's attempts to inspire teachers and educators in the fields of science and mathematics.

One of NASA's approaches to expose students to the agency's exciting activities is to get them to be active participants. One of those projects is the EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) program, which enables middle school students to take photographs of the Earth from a camera mounted on the Space Shuttle. EarthKAM, led by former astronaut Sally Ride, allows students to use the Internet to submit photo requests, which are uplinked to the camera aboard the shuttle. The digital images taken by the camera are made available to participating schools at EarthKAM's website. Students use the images to conduct investigations into topics such as human settlement patterns, mountain ranges, or agricultural patterns. The final reports are reviewed by scientists and educators to provide feedback to the students. The EarthKAM project is a collaborative effort between NASA, the University of California at San Diego, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, TERC, and industry sponsors. So far, EarthKAM has flown on five shuttle missions.

This summer marks the 20^th anniversary of a collaborative effort between NASA and Modern Technology Systems, Inc., called the Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program (SHARP). SHARP is an 8-week program, sponsored by NASA's Education Division, that assigns mentors from 11 participating NASA field installations to participating students. The mentors work with the students in a specific area of science or technology gaining hands-on experience while getting paid. Since its inception, approximately 2,914 students and more than 3,300 NASA employees have participated in the program.

Another NASA summer program, aimed at college students, is the Spaceflight and Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP) at Kennedy Space Center. A challenging, 6-week course designed to teach undergraduates how to successfully design and conduct biological research and operations in space, as well as how to assess the environmental impacts of a launch site. The curriculum consists of lectures from leading researchers, engineers, managers, and astronauts from NASA centers, universities, and industry.

Goddard Space Flight Center also looks to use the summer to expose students to career fields in engineering, science, and mathematics. Through the Summer Institute for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Research (SISTER) Program, Goddard aims to increase the awareness of female middle school students to the possibilities of careers in science fields. Sponsored by NASA's Equal Opportunity Programs Office and the Education Programs Office, female students entering the eighth grade participate in mentoring sessions and group activities, attend lectures and demonstrations, and take a local field trip, encouraging the participation of women in science and mathematics careers.

Alternately, NASA also brings state-of-the-art facilities to the students. Johnson Space Center has hit the road with a 53-foot long trailer to educate the public about how technology derived from the space program benefits the daily lives of people. The trailer will visit special events across the country as well as make stops at malls, universities and schools when the schedule permits. The exhibit includes dozens of space program spinoffs and a 10-minute video presentation in a Surround-Sound Theater onboard the trailer. The trailer will be on the road approximately 8 months out of the year as it criss-crosses the nation giving Americans a closer look at the benefits they have received from the space program over the last 40 years.

Another such project is the new Aeronautics Education Laboratory (AEL), located on the campus of Los Angeles Southwest College. The laboratory puts cutting-edge technology in the hands of students in grades 7 through 12. Various workstations allow students to examine elements of satellite global positioning, remote sensing, amateur radio, and aircraft design in an effort to strengthen math and science skills. NASA's Office of Equal Opportunity Programs provided the funding, while Glenn Research Center oversaw the design and implementation of the laboratory. The new AEL is modeled after the Mobile Aeronautics Education Laboratory (MAEL), established in 1996 by Glenn and Cuyahoga Community College. Originally the vision of former Ohio Congressman Louis Stokes, the program has grown from a single location to a multi-site organization. MAEL proved to be so popular and demand exceeded availability that permanent AELs have been established at multiple sites.

NASA is also tapping students to help them gear up for the next century. The multi-agency Mars Millennium Project (MMP) and the White House Millennium Council Youth Initiative effort has students designing communities for 100 people to inhabit on Mars in 2030. Each Mars Millennium team must come up with a livable and life-sustaining community on Mars that is culturally and artistically rich. NASA, the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous private and public organizations and businesses have collaborated on the project which hopes to encourage students to investigate the best of the past and present and apply it to the future.

Every April at Marshall Space Flight Center, over 400 high school and undergraduate students and teachers from around the nation participate in the Great Moonbuggy Race. The event challenges students to apply engineering skills and develop team spirit to design a human-piloted vehicle capable of traversing a lunar racecourse. The race is timed and the team with the fastest assembly and course time combined wins. Prizes are also awarded for originality of design.

NASA continues to play a vital role not only in discovering new information for the scientists and researchers of today, but also in helping to develop the next generation of engineering genius and scientific imagination that will assure the continued vitality and prominence of the American space program.