Outreach

Past Events

Volunteer Opportunity: The Landing & Recovery Challenge!

The Society of Women Engineers is taking our Landing and Recovery Challenge to Johnston Middle School on May 31. This is an egg drop competition to inspire and enlighten kiddos via an engineering challenge. The students will learn about the engineering related to bringing a crew back to Earth safely and then test their knowledge by create their own "spacecraft" to safely land a crew of eggs.

SWE-TSC is taking this event to Johnston Middle School at the request of Ms. Lanena Berry, a teacher who has worked with SWE-TSC officers on multiple occasions and who is herself an inspiring role model in education. We are also collaborating with Centerpoint Energy, who is graciously providing one of their bucket trucks for the drop!

We need your help, though, in order to make this event a success! Volunteers are needed to mentor the students in constructing their "spacecraft" and to conduct landing tests. Any and all volunteers are welcome. If you have worked on any sort of return vehicle or reentry project and would like to share a little bit about it, too, we'd be delighted to put you in the presentation! We know it's during the day, but these kids are really excited about this opportunity - projects like this don't make it into that area very often. Please help us bring space education to students who wouldn't normally be able to attend an event like this!

Details:

May 31, 8:45 am (will last about 3 hours)

Johnston Middle School (10410 Manhattan Drive, Houston, TX)

If you are interested in helping out, let us know by e-mailing tsc-president@swe.org! Feel free to forward this invitation, as well. The more volunteers we have, the more we can inspire these kids.

Jensen Elementary Career Fair

The Society of Women Engineers is cordially invited to participate in Jensen Elementary Career Fair on Friday, May 13, 2011. It will be held from 8:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. in the school gymnasium.

Our career day is designed like a health fair. Presenters will have a table where they may display pictures, videos, uniforms, tools, and anything relevant to their career. Small groups of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students will be coming to your booth approximately every 10 minutes or so.

We understand that your time is precious and offer breakfast bites, a million thanks , and a certificate of attendance. In the past, many employers have allowed time off to employees that wish to present to our students. Please consider investing in the future of our emergent leaders by filling out the attached registration form and emailing it to gchapa@pasadenaisd.org.

We look forward to seeing you on May 13th! If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me, Gabriela Chapa, school counselor at 713-740-0608 or via email at gchapa@pasadenaisd.org.

Also, please see here for a map to Jensen Elementary.

Spring Outreach Event

Date: Saturday, April 30, 2011
Time: 10:00am
Location: Lake Nassau Park

Space Day

Date: Sunday, April 10, 2011
Time: 11:00am
Location: Discovery Green

Mentors Needed for SIMBASE-TPD

Date: July 18-29, 2011
Time and Location:
Johnson Space Center
If interested, please contact Susie Raff, Aerospace Scholars, MAS Program Manager (281-244-1496) Susan.raff@nasa.gov by Friday, April 1

Overview
The goal of the simulation-based aerospace teacher professional development (SIMBASE-TPD) internships is to introduce K-12 educators to the foundation concepts of modeling and simulation and NASA applications of simulation-based engineering and science (SBE&S). Thirty-two middle school and high school teachers will be interning for two weeks at one of four NASA centers. The internships will take place in parallel July 18-29, 2011 at Langley and Ames Research Centers, Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center.

Teacher interns will be selected from a pool of applicants. A minimum of two teachers will be selected from each community so that they provide a small support group for one another upon their return. Roughly half of the teachers will be from middle school and half from high school so that they can begin to build a K-12 academic pipeline in SBE&S. Each teacher's application will identify additional support from industry and university partners within their communities, as well as their school districts. RTI International will identify additional industry partners to provide support for continuing education for the teachers in simulation-based aerospace engineering.

Participating teachers will receive classroom instruction from Education Specialists who are part of the NASA Aerospace Educators Services (AES) Project and spend time with technical mentors, subject matter experts who will explain how modeling and simulation are used in their particular application of aerospace engineering. The Education Specialists provide hands-on engineering lessons that the teachers can use in their own classrooms. AES and Center Education program coordinators also arrange for teachers to attend tours of some of the engineering facilities on site and hear short talks by technical specialists other than their technical mentors.

Two teachers (one middle school, one high school) are paired with a technical mentor(s) who is doing work in some area of systems engineering. Examples include robotics, aircraft or spacecraft design, air transportation system design, launch vehicle design, launch system architecture design, and launch vehicle processing, etc. The objective is to help the educators understand what a system is, what systems engineering is and what multi-disciplinary design involves. The system may well be a sub-system and the modeling and simulation that the mentor performs may be related to some aspect of the design or assessment of the sub-system.

Example problems introduced by mentors during the 2010 pilot include:

During the second week of the internship, teachers will begin working on the development of a lesson plan for their students. The lesson plan will explain their mentor's area of work. Education specialists will assist the teachers with the development of this lesson plan and provide a format and guidance on content. The technical mentor is expected to answer technical questions and comment on the accuracy of the technical content of the plan.

Role of Technical Mentors and Responsibilities
The role of the technical mentor is one of subject matter expert, both in their particular application of modeling and simulation and also in systems engineering. They are practicing engineers, not educators and are not expected to interpret or prepare the lesson plan for the teacher. Rather, they explain the work that they do in technical terms and provide technical references for the educator interns to explore the work in greater detail on their own.

Technical mentors are expected to spend approximately fifteen hours over the two weeks mentoring their educator interns. An hour a day will be included in the schedule for teacher teams to spend with their mentor in small group discussions. Mentors may adjust this schedule to fit with their technical workload and schedule but should try to provide approximately an hour most days. On one or two of the days, the teachers will shadow their mentor in the laboratory, spending 2 or 3 hours following their mentor through a test or engineering design exercise. The particular shadowing experience is left up to the mentor but should be more immersive than the small group discussions and should expose the teachers to the practice of engineering and familiarize them with a laboratory or test environment. For example, the teachers might shadow their mentor during a scheduled test or speak with other members of the engineering team about some aspect of the design or problem solution that they're working on.

Technical mentors should have a good understanding of systems engineering and how modeling and simulation are applied to solve aerospace systems engineering problems. Mentors are expected to provide an initial overview of their work, usually within the first or second day of the internship. This overview will be provided in the classroom for the benefit of all of the participants. It will be about 30 minutes in length, including five minutes for questions and answers.

Thank you for considering this opportunity. We can inspire our teachers to inspire their students to be the future of STEM disciplines!

Space Settlement Design Competition

The NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) Space Settlement Design Competition is an exciting industry simulation game for high school students (grades 10, 11, and 12) set in the later years of the 21st century. This competition emulates the experience of working as a member of an aerospace company team, developing a design and operations proposal for a new transportation capability, using fusion-based propulsion, to deliver human settlers and high value cargo to Martian orbit. The activity is done under typical proposal preparation constraints of too much to do in too little time, and with too much information to consider.

Half of the 170 high school students who participate are females, and need to see female role models in technical areas.

SWE volunteers are needed in the following areas:

Date: Friday, March 11 - Sunday, March 13, 2011
Location: JSC Gilruth Center
More Information:

Judges Needed for 50th Annual CCISD Science Fair

Date: Monday, February 28, 2011
Time and Location:
Elementary Fair 3:00-4:00pm at Bayside Intermediate School
Secondary Fair 4:00-5:00pm at Clear Falls High Schoool
More information and registration: http://www2.ccisd.net/Departments/CurriculumInstruction/Science/ScienceFair.aspx
Questions or problems registering? Please contact Terri Berry (tberry@ccisd.net or 281-284-0089), Anne Smith (amsmith@ccisd.net) or Carrie Burnham (281-284-0090 or cburnham@ccisd.net).

Future Cities Competition Judging

Date: Saturday, January 22, 2011
Time: 7:30am-4:00pm
Location: San Jacinto College Central
More Information: Competition Website

Winter Outreach

Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Saturn V Rocket Park
More Information: Flyer

E-mail Mentor

The price of our success is inspiring, encouraging, and enabling the success of others.

Don't have tons of time to dedicate to mentoring? No problem. Become an e-mail mentor.

Short bios have been distributed to local science and math teachers. Students will choose their mentors and contact them via e-mail.

For more information, contact Sarah Hargrove.

Engineers Week

This year, Engineers Week (E-Week) is happening February 20-26, 2011. See what's going on in Houston during E-Week.

The Houston E-Week Committee consists of volunteers from various technical and professional societies (such as civil, chemical, mechanical, petroleum, and electrical) around the Houston area. E-Week recognizes outstanding engineering students from area colleges; honors young engineers of the year from various technical and professional societies and are in the early stages of their careers; and honors the Houston Area Engineer of the Year who has a distinguished record of service to the engineering profession.

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