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Gov. Deval Patrick and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced today that Massachusetts and six Massachusetts educational institutions have been awarded a $1,515,024 grant under the NASA Summer of Innovation pilot program.
Under the three-year pilot program, NASA will partner with the Massachusetts colleges and universities to use the agency’s mission and technology programs to boost summer learning. The program has a particular focus on students who are underrepresented and underperforming in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
NASA will use the program to involve middle school teachers and students in STEM-oriented education programs.
“Through the Summer of Innovation project, NASA will work with partners and educators across America, to bring the excitement of space to thousands of middle school students, with an emphasis on broadening participation of underrepresented and underserved students,” Bolden said.
Based on the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium proposal, the six programs funded in Massachusetts will focus on providing NASA’s robotics, Earth and space science, astrophysics and engineering missions, while also using innovation in extensive partnership to reach a broad and diverse population of students through intensive summer engagement programs.
The six Massachusetts programs awarded funding were:
*Zero-Robotics - Aurora Flight Systems, MIT Space Systems Laboratory. Middle school students will work with MIT undergraduates to learn how to program and operate Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites, mini-satellites onboard the International Space Station, and engage in a competition simulating docking of orbiting spacecraft.
*STEM Explorations Living in Space using LEGO Robotics – Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach and Christa McAuliffe Challenger Learning Center at Framingham State. The “Living in Space” curriculum introduces students to the challenges astronauts face while living on the International Space Station.
*Goddard Girls - UMass Medical School. Named in recognition of Worcester native Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, the Goddard Girls will work in the Worcester Planetarium and at the Regional Science Resource Center doing science and other STEM-related activities.
*STEM in Astronautics and Space Sciences - Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Middle school students from female, low-income and underserved/underrepresented/underperforming populations will come to WPI for a two-week program where they will participate in an intensive and hands-on experience. The students will work with the teachers-in-training, learning about aeronautics, astronautics and space sciences with clear STEM components that can serve as catalysts for student learning.
*Talented & Gifted Latino Program & Astronomy - UMass Boston, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics. Talented and Gifted will lead an intensive five-week summer program that prepares 300 students by providing academic classes in the morning, and recreational and cultural activities in the afternoon.
*You Go Girls - MIT Edgerton Center. The Edgerton Center will sponsor four summer camp opportunities with Space Grant Summer of Innovation support. It will serve school systems in Cambridge, Boston and Gloucester. Programs include: a two-week materials science and engineering experience for eighth graders from Cambridge.
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