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By NASA
3 Min Read NASA Awards Launch Excitement for STEM Learning Nationwide
Southwest Girl Scout Council Leaders test out their “cereal box” pin-hole viewers to study the sun during educator training program. NASA awards inspire the next generation of explorers by helping community institutions like museums, science centers, libraries, and other informal education institutions and their partners bring science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content to their communities. NASA’s Next Generation STEM project has expanded the Teams Engaging Affiliated Museums and Informal Institutions (TEAM II) program to include a new tier of funding and provide even more opportunities to informal educational institutions across the country.
The new STEM Innovator tier will fund awards of approximately $250,000, the Community Anchor tier will continue to offer awards up to $50,000, and the highest award level will be designated the National Connector and fund initiatives up to $900,000. Fiscal year 2024 solicitations will target the Community Anchor and the new STEM Innovator award levels. Community Anchor and National Connector awards will be the focus for the fiscal year 2025 solicitation.
The TEAM II program was first expanded to include Community Anchors in 2022. Since then, the program has designated over 50 institutions across 29 states as NASA Community Anchors. These awards support proposals that strengthen the STEM impact of many community organizations, including:
5th-8th Graders from Whiting Village School join Flight Director Tyson as they embark on a Destination Mars Virtual Mission from their two-room schoolhouse in rural Maine.NASA The Challenger Learning Center of Maine reached more than 960 K-8 students statewide through 58 virtual programs touching 27 mainland schools and four island schools, hosted a STEM community night for residents of rural Whiting, Maine, and held two virtual programs featuring NASA women engineers for girls across the state.
“NASA’s funding allowed Challenger Maine to provide this Mars mission experience for free to schools, no matter their size,” said Kirsten Hibbard, executive director of the Challenger Learning Center of Maine. “We’ve connected with new schools and become this resource, literally a community anchor of STEM, for these schools.”
Youth at the Standing Arrow Powwow on the Flathead Reservation experience remote sensing content with virtual reality.NASA The University of Montana spectrUM Discovery Area engaged western Montana’s rural and tribal communities in understanding the role NASA and its partners play in sensing and responding to fire. SpectrUM developed the Montana Virtual Reality Fire Sensing Experience. Using ClassVR headsets, visitors learned about NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Joint Polar Satellite System satellites, JPSS-1 and JPSS-2, and how they are used to remotely sense the Earth.
SpectrUM collaborated with its community advisory group, SciNation on the Flathead Reservation, to incorporate fire and Earth science curricula developed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes into their field trip and educational programs, impacting hundreds of students.
A student from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana is excited to complete an activity in the “Aeronautics Museum in a Box” kit developed by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate; Community Anchor grantee Sci-Port Discovery Center in Shreveport, Louisiana; and Central Creativity, an education center in Laurel, Mississippi.NASA Sci-Port Discovery Center Shreveport, Louisiana introduced middle and high school students to NASA aeronautics content through their Aeronautics Museum in a Box kits. The kits were developed in collaboration with NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, Sci-Port, and Central Creativity. The kits include fun, hands-on activities focusing on the parts of an airplane, principles of flight, airplane structure and materials, propulsion, future of flight, careers, and more. Students and families from underserved communities across Northwest Louisiana tested the kits and shared feedback with developers.
“Museum in a Box brought our participants to new heights beyond their imagination. They see themselves as teachers for their children, as a source of guidance for STEM careers instead of gangs,” said Dr. Heather Kleiner, director, Northwest LaSTEM Innovation Center, Sci-Port Discovery Center.
U.S. informal education institutions interested in proposing for these awards are invited to attend an optional pre-proposal webinar Thursday, July 25, or Tuesday, August 13. Event times and connection details are available here.
More information about funding opportunities can be found on NASA’s TEAM II Grant Forecasting webpage.
To learn more about TEAM II Community Anchors, visit:TEAM II Community Anchors – NASA
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By NASA
3 min read
Science Activation’s PLACES Team Facilitates Second Professional Learning Institute
The NASA Science Activation Program’s Place-Based Learning to Advance Connections, Education, and Stewardship (PLACES) team successfully led their second Professional Learning (PL) Summer Institute (SI) at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona from June 11-13, 2024. The team led a group of 13 educators through a variety of powerful place-based data-rich (PBDR) experiences across the three-day SI. PL kicked off with teachers engaging in an intensive field experience at Hat Ranch that leveraged the ecological expertise of NAU’s subject matter expert, Jared Litson Begay, and using data collection protocols from the NASA-sponsored program, GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) to better understand piñon pine populations in Flagstaff ecosystems. Following this, teachers moved from their primary data collection experiences to exploring secondary data that expanded on the piñon pine focus by leveraging data and the Data Literacy Cubes from My NASA Data (MND).
Using and reflecting on GLOBE protocols created powerful conversations where teachers saw how place influenced how they engaged in data collection and how data can help develop new place-based knowledge and connections in their contexts. One teacher even shared that “collecting data using the GLOBE app and making observations about data helped me better understand how I can use these practices with my students.” The MND data and Data Literacy Cubes offered educators the pathways to move from their primary data collection experiences to ask and answer new and exciting questions.
In the follow-up survey, teachers shared that they are interested in exploring “additional resources from NASA,” using “local experts or data for small town/rural areas through NASA,” and implementing PBDR instruction using NASA assets in the coming months. 100% of teachers who were surveyed after the PL indicated (1) they agree or strongly agree that they feel greater connection to NASA and knowledge of NASA assets, and (2) they would recommend the PLACES PL to a colleague. In the coming months, the teachers will participate in a virtual Community of Practice where they will implement PBDR experiences in their own contexts, share examples of student work, and elicit feedback from one another to continue improving their practice.
The PLACES team would like to give a huge shout-out to those who contributed to planning, developing, and implementing the NAU Summer Institute!
Facilitation Team: Sean Michael Ryan (NAU), Lori Rubino-Hare (NAU), Karen Lionberger (WestEd), Frieda Richsman (Concord Consortium) Support Team: Lauren Schollenberger (NAU) Team Member Participants: Barbie Buckner (NASA Langley), Tracy Ostrom (GLOBE, UC Berkeley), Sara Salisbury (WestEd) Observers: Kirsten Dehler, Nicole Wong (WestEd) PLACES is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC22M0005 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Summer Institute participant uses the GLOBE observer app in the field to gather data on the height of trees at Hat Ranch in Flagstaff, AZ. Share
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
From left, team members Annie Meier, Malay Shah, and Jamie Toro assemble the flight hardware for NASA’s Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, on Oct. 10, 2019, in the Space Station Processing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. OSCAR began as an Early Career Initiative project at the spaceport that studies technology to convert trash and human waste into useful gasses such as methane, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. NASA/Cory Huston There’s no “I” in team, and that holds true for NASA and its partners as the agency ramps up efforts to recruit tenured professors to research science for a semester at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The tenured teachers work for up to a year in an area where the agency needs specific expertise.
NASA often finds tenured professors – someone who has been guaranteed a job with their university until they retire – through seminars or publications. Assignments must be mutually beneficial to the agency and organizations involved.
“At NASA, we want researchers who are doing something that could help us, that could be synergistic, and to not reinvent the wheel,” said Dr. Jose Nuñez, University Partnerships and Small Sat Capabilities manager at NASA Kennedy. “The goal is to find professors who can benefit the agency in an area that needs more research.”
The U.S. government’s Intergovernmental Personnel Act Mobility Program allows the temporary assignment of personnel between the federal, state, local governments, colleges and universities, Indian tribal governments, federally funded research and development centers, and other eligible organizations.
Dr. Reza Toufiq, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, is the first professor to leverage school funds to spend a semester at NASA Kennedy and work on projects dealing with waste and resource recovery.
Toufiq specializes in how to convert everyday trash into energy, including the ash or char left behind from thermally treated trash. He worked with Dr. Annie Meier, who leads a team that converts astronauts’ trash into gasses that can be used for fuel.
Flight hardware for NASA’s Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, is inside the Applied Physics Lab inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21, 2022. By processing small pieces of trash in a high-temperature reactor, OSCAR is advancing new and innovative technology for managing waste in space. NASA/Kim Shiflett “I wanted to learn on the terrestrial side how we can infuse some of our technology, and he wanted to learn from us to grow into the space sector, so it was a really cool match,” said Meier, technical lead for situ resource utilization and waste management resource recovery systems at NASA Kennedy.
Although Toufiq’s sabbatical with NASA is over, his work is not. Meier just received approval for a project through a Space Act Agreement, which allows a research sponsor to use NASA scientists and facilities to benefit both parties. Meier and other researchers at NASA will give Toufiq information on space waste products and lunar regolith stimulants; in turn, he will do the testing, and provide data to the agency because some of that information is currently unknown.
“He’s learning a lot about the fundamentals of different things with waste that we aren’t really doing, so we lean on academia to get some of that information and offer a fresh perspective,” Meier said.
An intergovernmental assignment is generally approved for up to two years, but it can extend for up to six years with authorization. The length of the appointment also depends on the agency’s needs and university’s sabbatical guidelines, which could pay for one or more semesters.
The University Partnerships team now is working to bring on two professors to NASA Kennedy next semester.
“There are many tenured professors and universities who would like to come here, but we are careful to use due diligence to make sure what they’re doing is something that aligns with our research and technology interests,” Nuñez said.
To learn more about the wide range of research happening at the Florida spaceport, click here.
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By NASA
Prelaunch Activities for Our Next Commercial Crew Flight Test on This Week @NASA – April 26, 2024
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By NASA
Manil Maskey (ST1) co-authored a position paper entitled “Data-centric Machine Learning Research — Past, Present and Future.” The pre-print of the paper is available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.13028.
This work represents a joint effort by experts in artificial intelligence from industry, government, and academic sectors, dedicated to emphasizing and enhancing the importance of data in machine learning.
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