NASA’s Education Programs for High School Students
By frank Scalzo, Ph.D.

NASA’s Educational Programs provide support for systemic improvement, teacher preparation/enhancement, curriculum support and dissemination, student support, educational technology and research and development. Some notable NASA student and teacher support programs in the NYC/Metropolitan include the American Museum of Natural History’s Planet Earth interactive exhibit, Summer High School Apprentice Research Program (SHARP - provides gifted and talented, ethnic minority students with an opportunity to work with a scientist or engineer on NASA research and development projects), New Jersey Middle School Distance Mentoring project at Stevens Institute of Technology (implemented at five Hudson County schools), the NASA Educational Resource Center at City College of New York, and a number of research projects at colleges throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut..

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), founded in 1961 as a division of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD, is located at 2880 Broadway in NYC. Current research, under the direction of Dr. James Hansen, emphasizes a broad study of Global Change, which is an interdisciplinary research initiative addressing natural and man-made changes in our environment, which is an interdisciplinary research initiative addressing natural and man-made changes in our environment that occur on various time scales and affect the habitability of our planet.

In 1994 Carolyn Harris and Dr. Hansen founded the Institute on Climate and Planets (ICP), by recruiting talented and underrepresented students and teachers from NYC area high schools and CUNY undergraduates, to participate on summer research teams and work with graduate students and NASA scientists on research projects to improve what is known about Earth’s Climate and Global change. ICP faculty fellows formulate and implement Earth Science curriculum materials, which are aligned with national standards and integrated into existing high school and college courses.#

Frank Scalzo, Ph.D. is an Education Specialist at NASA in NYC. He can be reached at 212-678-6038.

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