HR: 13:55h
AN: ED23B-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Engaging Students from Minority Serving Institutions Through Research Internships in NASA Space Science and Exploration
AU: * Stockman, S A
EM: stockman@core2.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: Science Systems and Applications, Inc, Code 698 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Harrington, J L
EM: james@muspin.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: MUSPIN Program, Code 606.3 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: Through an ongoing partnership with NASA's Minority University Space Interdisciplinary Network (MU-SPIN) the MESSENGER, New Horizons and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) missions have hosted science, engineering and computer science undergraduate and masters students in summer internships over the past several years. These programs have proved beneficial to students, their institutions and local communities, and to the NASA missions. The first internship opportunity was a highly successful partnership between MU-SPIN and the MESSENGER program where fifteen undergraduate and masters students were placed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory during the testing and integration of the MESSENGER spacecraft in Summer 2003. Many of these students are either in NASA related jobs or are pursuing advanced degrees. For example, of the five students from City University of New York one is an Aerospace Engineer at Wallops Flight Facility, another received her MS in Computer Science and is working for the NSF Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program. One just received her BS in Math and was accepted to the NASA Academy at Glenn Research Center while another is continuing his studies in Computer Engineering at City College of New York. The only community college student intern is now a Space Grant Fellow at Penn State, majoring in aerospace engineering. Student interns from the MESSENGER program were also involved in community outreach following their internship. Several students from South Carolina State University presented their internship experiences to local science teachers during an in-service teacher workshop on the MESSENGER mission. The second internship program took place in Summer 2005 and placed students at Goddard Space Flight Center with LRO and at JHUAPL with the New Horizons mission. LRO interns worked with individual instrument teams while New Horizons interns were engaged in environmental testing and software development for the Pluto-bound spacecraft. The majority of the interns have expressed a desire to return next summer and at least two students were given the opportunity to continue work at JHUAPL. During our presentation, we will provide the results of follow-up interviews with the mentors and interns who took part in the 2005 internship program. We will also discussed lessons learned for those who are exploring implementing similar programs at their research centers or colleges and universities.
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0855 Diversity
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005