What happened to those promising space stars?. A study on afterwards results of students competitions
- Paper number
IAC-09.A1.8.10
- Author
Mr. Alider Cragnolini, Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), Spain
- Year
2009
- Abstract
Organising competitions among youngsters on space topics is one of the ways used by agencies and other institutions to promote a larger interest on the matter. Those initiatives are also commonly based upon the idea of contributing to reinforce or even stimulate scientific and technical vocations, having in mind the lack of them in present times. That’s why some competitions are called to students in a moment prior of selecting their university studies. According to this assumption, an outcome of such a kind of competitions would be –some years later- confirmed by the enrolment of a substantial number of former participants for S&T careers. Does the reality correspond to this premise? Did the competition attract a good number of future space scientists? Does their present academic performance rate above the average?. Taking as a basic material the personal information of previous editions of a competition at national scale, this study goes back to the group of participants in the last 5 years aiming to find out –via on line questionnaire- what the present situation of each one is, the disciplines chosen, the student’s records, etc. The survey presents some insights into the reality of resulting issues to be taken as input in future competitions. This study could be considered as a continuation of a former one, where the need to go into this topic was already expressed (A. Cragnolini “Sputnik - Space Age in the view of young Spaniards”. IAC 07 E1.I.11)
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)