One World: Global Visions for Space Exploration Education
- Paper number
IAC-07-E1.5.05
- Author
Dr. Marlene MacLeish, National Space and Biomedical Research Institute, United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), established in 1997 through a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) competition, is a twelve-university consortium dedicated to space life science research and education. The NSBRI’s Education and Public Outreach Program (EPOP) is supporting NASA’s education mission to strengthen the nation’s future science workforce through initiatives that communicate space exploration biology to schools; support undergraduate and graduate programs; fund postdoctoral fellowships; and engage national and international audiences in collegial exchanges that promote global visions for space exploration education. This paper describes a decade of NSBRI EPOP activities, including scholarly interchanges with audiences in Canada, Greece, Scotland, Italy, Austria and Spain. NSBRI EPOP submits its Kindergarten through undergraduate level (K-16) accomplishments as an educational strategy for engaging educators from across the globe in discourse about space exploration education. The current NSBRI EPOP K-16 team is comprised of four partners: Baylor College of Medicine (BCM); Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM); Rice University and the University of Texas Medical Branch (RU/UTMB); and the Colorado Consortium for Space and Earth Education (CCSEE). NSBRI EPOP K-16 activities are organized around four themes: teacher professional development, curriculum materials production, career awareness and science literacy. These themes provide a road map for designing effective summer science research internships for undergraduate college and medical students; professional development and classroom activities that reach approximately 10,000 teachers and students; and mass media communication directed to millions of television, radio, and community-based audiences. to museums and science centers across the US. NSBRI’s Graduate Education Program in Space Life Sciences is conducted jointly at Texas AM University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the HarvardMIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. The program is developing modules in space related biomedical science and engineering to broaden current graduate curricula at these institutions. Ten two-year postdoctoral fellowships have been awarded over the past three years to young scientists who conduct their own space-related biomedical research in NSBRI laboratories in the US.- Abstract document