Summer of Innovation with Teachers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

By Dr. Charles Kironji Gatebe, NASA Scientist for GLOBE Student Research Campaign on Climate

This summer, NASA launched a new initiative in support of the president’s Educate to Innovate campaign for excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, where thousands of school teachers and students will engage in stimulating math and science-based education programs at NASA centers. We accepted three teacher interns for summer placement in our Lab at NASA Goddard: one from the Endeavor program and the other two from the Science Teachers and Researchers (STAR).

Our goal is to engage the teachers in a way that reinforces teaching and learning in STEM content areas, and especially in the use of discoveries that NASA makes on a daily basis to inspire the next generation of explorers, scientists, engineers, and astronauts. After the completion of the program, the Endeavor Fellow will be awarded three graduate credits and the NASA Endeavor Certificate in STEM Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and which can count towards state certification requirements. The STAR Fellows are expected to prepare and present a research poster describing summer research at the end of the program and to participate in teacher-scientist community building activities (in person and online) during and after program participation.

We are excited to introduce the 2010 STAR Fellows (James Ruff and Robyn Williams), who have already begun their internship (June-August) at our lab. James aspires to be a physics educator for high school students, while Robyn aspires to be a biology educator for high school students.

The Endeavor Fellow (Kim Abegglen) will report in mid-July for a period of two weeks, but will continue working with us remotely during the school year.

Towards the end of their summer research, the fellows will share with you their excitement, experiences and lessons learned from the frontlines and trenches of science. All the interns are interested in participating in the upcoming GLOBE Student Research Campaign on Climate (2011-2013).

James Ruff

I am a teacher from Baltimore, Maryland. I received my Bachelor of Science in physics from Loyola College in Maryland. Following graduation, I worked for a couple of years at Westinghouse Electric Corporation in reliability engineering on a radar jamming pod placed under the F-16 fighter jet. As the Berlin Wall fell, so did the defense budget and I went off on my own an opened a small deli in Richmond, VA. I ran the business for ten years then decided to follow my heart and start teaching physics. I started during the 2005-6 academic year with Baltimore City in physics and found myself slowly being moved to teach ninth grade Earth Science and technology classes. While in Baltimore City, I participated in the Integrating Teacher Quality – Through Opportunities in Physics and Physical Science program at Frostburg State University, the Smithsonian Science Educator Academy in Washington, D.C., and the TI NSpire workshop in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2009, I left the Baltimore City School System to finish the Master of the Arts in Teaching program full time at Towson University. Here I received the coveted Robert Noyce Scholarship for STEM teachers and additionally was accepted as a Science Teacher and Researcher intern at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I graduated May 2010 specializing in secondary science education and am a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the international honor society in education. At the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, I am proud to work with Dr. Charles Gatebe in the Climate and Radiation Branch and learn about the GLOBE program.

I am excited to be working at NASA this summer. People from all over the world come here to consult with the professionals. It is a place where people are coming up with answers to questions that I had never thought of. To witness the thinking and planning; the trial and error; the execution and follow through is exhilarating. Every little detail is analyzed and models perfected. The results are truly astonishing. By sharing what I learn while I am here at Goddard Space Flight Center, I expect to be able to go back to the classroom and inspire a new generation of scientists. I am looking for general characteristic of scientists that I can develop in my students. Besides having a scientific way of looking at the world, I see this lot as very meticulous, sharing, positive, and generous, but mainly inquisitive. I anticipate arousing the inquisitive nature of my students with the stories of my time at NASA.

Robyn Williams

I am a Science Teachers and Researchers (STAR) Intern at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. During this internship, I will be working with scientists to create an activity for the GLOBE program.

I began my higher level schooling at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where I decided to major in Biological Sciences. Towards the end of my sophomore year, I decided to apply for a new scholarship that was going to be offered at UMBC, the Robert Noyce Scholarship. This scholarship is for students who hope to become future science teachers. Through this scholarship program, I was given the opportunity to take free education classes where I would be able to teach science to high school students before officially accepting the award.

During that summer, I taught physics and biology to the students in the Upward Bound program. During the first part of the summer, I was given the opportunity to use various physics simulations and molecular programs to teach heat transfer. The students were also engaged in an experiment that would require them to keep a hot dog hot and a juice box cold while both were in the same container. The students learned about what materials would be better insulators and what materials would be better conductors.

After the physics unit, we, teachers, were paired with an Alice Ferguson Foundation program, “Bridging the Watershed”, to teach students about chemistry and biology and for them to complete experiments outside in the field. During this program, we had to design 5 lesson plans, based on the 5E model, which would be taught to the students, one of which would have the students taking a field trip to a state park to do their experiment. Because I was teaching about invasive plant species, I had to teach the students how to properly identify the plants and how to pick a section in the park to study. After the summer of my sophomore year, I decided to accept the scholarship award and begin my journey to become a biology teacher.

As a STAR intern at NASA, I hope to learn about the different educational resources that they offer to students and teachers. I hope to observe how scientists are able to communicate their findings among themselves and the public. I also look forward to gain first hand research experience and to help bridge the gap between teachers and scientists. At the end of this program I hope to have created an activity that would link the GLOBE protocols to global climate awareness in order to increase climate change understanding among students.