My involvement in the Stem Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) program started sometime around early spring 2021. The involvement was preceded by a strong recommendation from Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, PI, GLOBE Mission Earth, The University of Toledo.
Indeed, to me as a member of the GLOBE International STEM Network (GISN), my participation in SEES became an opportunity to invoke the GISN mandate which includes to mentor and inspiring students. During the SEES 2021 Internship Program, my task as SEES mentor gave me an opportunity to interact weekly with selected talented students in Urban Heat Island (UHI) Group. The students had a wide geographical spread from Montana to Texas, and from California to DC.
This year, 2022 SEES Program will afford me and my colleague-Sara, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Yitong at GLOBE Mission Earth, University of Toledo the privilege to once again, mentor and inspire SEES 2022 NASA Internship students on two projects: Urban Heat Island and Air Quality.
In Sara’s comment “As part of the GLOBE Mission EARTH Team, I am honored to begin another summer working with such talented students as those in the NASA SEES Internship Program. It is simultaneously humbling and inspiring to see high school students conduct research and analyses that I only learned about as a graduate student myself!"
“I thoroughly enjoyed working with high school interns from the SEES program last summer. It was the highlight of the year. The students are ambitious, passionate, and hard-working in the Urban Heat Island group. They not only had hands-on experience in scientific research, but also were challenged, humbled, inspired, and changed during the short period of time. I'm also encouraged to see that two students reached out to us after the internship and continued their research with us this year” This was Dr. Yitong’s personal comment after 2021 SEES internship experience.
Indeed, I look forward to a memorable and intellectual journey in the summer that will birth students’ hands-on and real-world projects in UHI and Air quality studies.
