NASA Advisory Council Elevates Education Committee Status
Keith’s note: At its last meeting in September 2018 the NASA Advisory Council adopted this recommendation:
“Elevating the Status of the Ad Hoc Task Force on STEM Education. Recommendation: The Council recommends that the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Ad Hoc Task Force on STEM Education should become a regular committee of the NAC. Major Reasons for the Recommendation: A regular committee of the NAC that focuses on STEM engagement, and is made up of representatives from key stakeholder groups, will provide a set of diverse perspectives from difference constituent groups about trends and current events in the national STEM movement. Consequences of No Action on This Recommendation:
– The institutional knowledge developed by the current NAC Ad Hoc Task Force on STEM Education over the last 43 months will be lost.
– The Terms of Reference for the NAC Ad Hoc Task Force on STEM Education indicate that with no extension or formalization, the Task Force dissolves in November 2018.”
On 26 October 2018 NASA Administrator Bridenstine sent a letter to NAC Chair Lester Lyles with the following response to this recommendation:
“NASA Response: NASA concurs with the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) recommendation to elevate the NAC Ad Hoc Task Force on STEM Education to become a regular committee of the NAC. To that end, BASA is in the process of formally amending the NAC CHarter to reflect this change. The name of this committee will be the STEM Engagement Committee. This change will tak effect immediately upon the signature of the NASA Administrator to the amended NAC Charter.”
NASA needs some serious guidance in their educational programs. The last few years they were trying to do away with education completely. NASA does not take it seriously. Their AA and much of the education staff have no serious education credentials. NASA does not know what is needed, why it is needed, and they are not getting the job done. Years ago someone as high up as the President felt NASA needed to put trained, educated educators in orbit. That happened last year with a couple bonafide trained and experienced educator astronasuts, and so they had a year of education in orbit which consisted of a series of Q&A sessions with schools; that was the best they could come up with? What a waste.
That’s what this is about. The NASA Advisory Council is an independent panel with a charter to tell NASA whether or not NASA is doing what it ought to do and whether or not they are doing it in the right way. Now, they have said NASA needs a review panel at a similar but slightly junior level for STEM and educational issues. The NAC is basically telling NASA that they need to get their act together in this respect, and that’s also what I think you are saying.
You’ve got it. We already see that NASA is doing a lousy job when it comes to design, development and engineering. Maybe they ought to get some competent designers, developers and engineers. And so they figure by putting bean counters and HR specialists in charge of educational programs they’ll really figure out how to manage educational programs.The entire NASA bureaucracy is corrupt. Time for leadership heads to roll.
Rather than promoting a mere publicity stunt like the last Administration the new National Space Council has created an Outreach and Education Subcommittee as part of the UAG. Its more likely to produce lasting improvements in NASA Education. I expect this elevating of the status of the NAC is linked to the NSC indicating its importance.
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/…
What is the purpose of education outreach?
Is this a program to spread the wealth? To disseminate what’s been learned through the many excellent projects, some of which get much less press than they deserve (COBE, for instance).
Or is it “show the flag,” an effort to strut a bit, raising in public eyes the importance of NASA and the relative contribution to the public weal, with an eye towards financial stabilization or long term project support (a moon base, say)?
Or is it simply to get more engineers, hence the inclusion of the catchphrase “STEM”? (if so that’s shortsighted, in my view, but not horrible).
Once some sort of clarity is reached there are lessons to be learned from our advertising, and especially marketing, friends: the amount of education outreach need not be much, but it does need to be consistent and on-message.
And it needs to carry the same message year after year, decade after decade. This is something that political folks learned many, many years ago.
The benefits should be measured, not in 2018 or 2020, but in 2030 or so.
“What is the purpose of education outreach?”
An excellent question! I think the answer to this question lies in another one:
What is the purpose of the US space program?
If we don’t have a good answer for the last question, it makes it a lot harder to answer all the related questions.
To an extent NASA should be doing a lot of these things, but there are 75 million school students who deserve to be educated about what the space program has done, is doing and might do in the future. NASA ought to be assisting in developing programs that introduce and spur interest in space and STEM studies, so that students will be in the pipeline for future programs, and the programs need to expand so that there are jobs for appropriately trained students. NASA is developing little to no content for the schools, so they are doing little to encourage study, and they offer zero job security for people who have been in the program. There are still tens of thousands out of work in the wake of the premature Shuttle shut down. So, in short, NASA is failing. They are failing because they have no plan and no strategy for what they ought to be doing.
Letting students know what NASA is doing, and encouraging science/engineering education (both for its own sake and to make sure we have a qualified workforce in the future) are fine things. But how does that make NASA different from other government agencies?
Don’t the National Institutes of Health have a similar responsibility to let students know what they are doing? And encourage students to go into medical and biological research? They have a $37 billion dollar budget (almost twice NASA’s.) I actually don’t know what NIH does in terms of outreach and education. Do they put the same emphasis on it as NASA (or do people have similar expectations of them)? If not, why not?
https://science.education.n…
The NIH “curriculum supplements” are world renowned for quality in health education. They re probably mistitled because frequently they form the health program curriculum rather that just serving as a supplement. And the cost. Relative fraction of what NASA spends on education. NASA hasn’t created anything equivalent since the 1960s. NASAspends all its time, effort and money trying to create big messages (that for the most part have minimal meaning or impact) and trying to entertain. The Year of education from ISS is a good example. They did about 75 Q&A sessions over a year, answered several hundred questions from thousands of students. Meanwhile 75 million school kids go uneducated about space in general, space history, space programs, space science. Of course they can go watch First Man, or the Right Stuff, and then they still wont know very much.
It seems to me provide a sound budget for an education office, hire some knowledgable and enthusiastic go-getters but don’t burden them with horrible bureaucracy of confusing procurement requirements, gauntlet of IT waiver justification, dubious list of what to say/what not to say, etc. Oh, let them decide what kind of computers and printers they want to use, and how their webpages should look like.