Posts tagged STEM
CU engineering students are now NASA rocket scientists
Jun 23rd
The program allowed more than 120 students and educators from around the country to delve into the world of rocket science June 15-21 during Rocket Week at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. All participants — including 10 CU-Boulder students — were present for a sounding rocket launch carrying various experiments developed by students that successfully lifted off June 20 at 5:30 a.m. EDT.
Activities during the week included a “RockOn!” workshop for 50 university and community college-level participants led by Chris Koehler, director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, or COSGC. RockOn! introduces participants to building small experiments that can be launched on suborbital sounding rockets and supports a national program known as STEM that uses classes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to improve the nation’s competitiveness in technology.
“Working with NASA, we have developed a step approach to expand the skills needed for students to enter careers in STEM,” said Koehler of CU-Boulder’s aerospace engineering sciences department. “RockOn! is the first step, followed by RockSat-C and then RockSat-X. Each step is technically more challenging than the previous one, allowing the students to expand the skills needed to support the aerospace industry.”
The RockOn! participants built standardized experiments that were launched Thursday on a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket. The 35-foot-tall rocket flew to an altitude of about 75 miles. After launch and payload recovery, the participants began conducting preliminary data analysis and discussing their results.
Nine custom-built Rocksat-C experiments, developed at universities that previously participated in a RockOn! workshop, also flew inside a payload canister on the rocket, said Koehler. About 50 students who designed and built the experiments attended Rocket Week.
Also attending were university participants in RockSat-X, said Koehler. They are previous Rocksat-C participants who flew six custom-built experiments aboard a sounding rocket from Wallops in August.
COSGC is a statewide organization involving 17 colleges, universities and institutions around Colorado and is funded by NASA to give students access to space through innovative courses, real-world, hands-on telescope and satellite programs, and interactive outreach programs, said Koehler.
COSGS is one of 52 space grant consortia in the nation — including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia — and is one of the most active, having flown scores of payloads on high-altitude balloons, sounding rockets and even space shuttles, giving thousands of undergraduates and graduate students a taste of space research since the program began in Boulder in 1989, said Koehler.
The week’s activities also included activities by the Wallops Rocket Academy for Teachers and Students, or WRATS, for a high school audience. The rocket programs at Wallops continue NASA’s investment in the nation’s education programs by supporting the goal of attracting and retaining students in STEM disciplines critical to the future of space exploration.
The RockOn! and WRATS workshops are supported by NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program. RockOn! also is supported by NASA’s Office of Education and NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program in partnership with the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia.
For more information on COSPG visit http://spacegrant.colorado.edu and for information about NASA’s education programs visit http://www.nasa.gov/education.
-CU-
CU: The Brazilians are coming! (to study science)
Feb 17th
undergraduates study at CU-Boulder
100,000 Brazilian students, fully funded by Brazil’s booming economy, want to share knowledge
The University of Colorado Boulder welcomed 19 students from Brazil this semester as part of the new Science Without Borders Program and Brazil’s initiative to place and fully fund outstanding students abroad to supplement their studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.
The students are among approximately 650 Brazilian undergraduates who have been selected to study on U.S. campuses with funding for their tuition, fees and housing from the Brazilian government’s Science Without Borders Program. The program, announced last year, provides scholarships to Brazilian undergraduate students for one year of study at one of more than 100 host colleges and universities, including CU-Boulder. Scholarships are given primarily to students in the STEM fields. After two semesters and an on- or off-campus internship, the students will return to Brazil to complete their degrees.
“Science Without Borders interested me because I wanted to know what it was like to study and live on campus and to learn in a different environment,” said Victor Sabioni, an aerospace engineering student from the Universidade de Federal de minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte. “I am taking two classes that are not offered at home, and everything is great so far.
“The campus is amazingly beautiful and everyone has been so welcoming and polite. CU couldn’t be better. It’s like heaven with homework.”
The Science Without Borders Program at CU-Boulder is offered through a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering and Applied Science and the Division of Continuing Education.
“The students are studying with their peers, living in university housing and experiencing life in Colorado and the U.S.,” said Anne Heinz, dean of Continuing Education and associate vice chancellor for outreach and engagement. “Several of the students already have indicated an interest in returning to CU-Boulder for graduate school.
“CU-Boulder students, whether they’re from the San Luis Valley, San Francisco or São Paulo, will benefit from the enriched classroom conversations and experiences enabled by these programs,” she said. “These collaborations foster our future as a global society, and we look forward to CU-Boulder’s continued participation in this program.”
An additional cohort of students is scheduled to arrive later this year for programs beginning in the summer and fall.
The Science Without Borders Program is part of a larger Brazilian government initiative to grant 100,000 scholarships to Brazil’s best students to study abroad at the world’s best universities. The program is sponsored by the scholarship foundation of Brazil’s Ministry of Education, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. The program is administered by the Institute of International Education, an independent nonprofit specializing in international exchange. The institute has been working closely with the ministry and with CU-Boulder and other U.S. universities to place the students in study programs that best meet their academic needs.
“We are pleased to be partnering with the government of Brazil and with the U.S. host campuses to implement this important program,” said Allan E. Goodman, Institute of International Education president and CEO. “At a time when Brazil’s economy is expanding rapidly, and Brazil and the United States are forging unprecedented ties in trade, energy and scientific development, we look to higher education as another area where our two countries should seek much stronger cooperation.”