3 HOPKINSVILLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS SELECTED TO VISIT NASA

Dennis L. McCauley, Mariah Mitchell and Bethany Strother of Hopkinsville Community College have been selected to travel to either NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas or Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, October 20-22, 2010, to participate in a three-day on-site event.

The students have been selected as three of 89 community and junior college students from across the nation to be part of the National Community College Aerospace Scholars program. Students completed four Web-based assignments during the school year, maintaining a 93 average to qualify for the experience. They will apply what they have learned during the year to work with NASA engineers.

The program is a three-day on-site event at that offers students from across the nation the opportunity to interact with each other as they learn more about careers in science and engineering. While at the program, students form teams and establish fictional companies interested in Mars exploration. Each company is responsible for developing a prototype rover, designing a line drawing of the rover, and forming the company infrastructure including budget, communications, and presentations.

The on-site experience includes a tour of facilities and briefings by noted NASA employees including astronauts.

National Community College Aerospace Scholars is a program based on Texas Aerospace Scholars, originally created by the state of Texas in partnership with NASA and the Texas educational community. Both programs are designed to encourage community and junior college students to enter careers in science and engineering and ultimately join the nations highly technical workforce.

With this program, NASA continues the agencys investment in educational programs that attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, disciplines critical to NASAs future missions.

For additional information, please contact Deborah Hutchings, National Community College Aerospace Scholars program manager at 281-483-8623 or deborah.hutchings-1@nasa.gov. For more information, please visit http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/NCAS/.