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Education

NASA Education and PAO: Asleep at The Wheel (again)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 26, 2005

NASA Ames to Host Thousands of Students for Annual Jason Event

“Starting Monday, Jan. 31, and continuing through Friday, Feb. 4, 2005, the main auditorium at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley, will be ‘transformed’ into the Mississippi River Delta and Louisiana’s Cajun country to host 5,200 Bay area students and teachers scheduled to participate in the 2005 JASON Expedition: Disappearing Wetlands.”

Editor’s note: You’d think ARC PAO would want to drum up maximum visibility for this event. Apparently not: They only sent this media advisory out with 4 days advance notice (2 of which are on a weekend). Also, with 5,200 students participating in a NASA event, you’d think that NASA’s Education Office would be heavily promoting this event. Again, the answer is no. The last “news” on the Education website at NASA HQ is dated 15 Jan 2005. No mention is made of this event.

Oh yes, then there is this new solicitation:

NASA Solicitation: Seeking Collaboration to Conduct Student Competition to Name the Node 2 Element of the International Space Station

“NASA seeks an unfunded collaboration with a commercial or non-profit organization to define, organize and execute a nationwide project-oriented competition for K-12 students in U.S. schools to select a name for the Node 2 element of the International Space Station (ISS) to be launched on a future Space Shuttle flight.”

There is no mention of this national education project on the Education website either.

And then there are these College-level education awards announced today as well:

NASA Funds Work-Force Development Projects to Support Vision

“NASA has selected 32 consortia in the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. They will receive $3 million in awards this year for aerospace work force development to support the Vision for Space Exploration.”

No mention of this announcement either. It is hard to imagine how you are going to excite students – and educators – when so many people at NASA PAO and its Education office are asleep at the wheel.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.