By Javier Cabrera / Editor in Chief
By Javier Cabrera / Editor in Chief
Like Halley’s Comet, which comes around once in a lifetime, Riverside City College’s S.T.E.M. Club has a once in a lifetime opportunity in their hands.
The S.T.E.M. club is scraping up all the requirements and money needed to host the NASA Student Spaceflight Experiment program at RCC.
The NASA program has been giving students from all over the country a chance to participate in the program, but RCC would have the first students from California to participate.
The program launched in June 7, 2010 and the program offers students from middle school, high school and junior college the opportunity to propose experiments to fly in low Earth orbit and present their ideas and accomplishments with local, national and global audiences.
RCC has the opportunity to host a design competition for students which guarantees the winning design, a spot in a minilab which is the last shuttle mission Atlantis sometime in August or September.
Riverside students will design a “Mission Patch” that will fly aboard the shuttle and then be returned to us to be put on display as part of the competition.
The efforts are led by Engineering and Physics instructor and S.T.E.M. club Adviser, Charity Trojanowski, who is urging RCC faculty and administration to rally behind this program and allow RCC to be the first school in California to host the NASA program.
“The competition we propose will engage approximately 1300 RCC students and 1100 local high school students directly in a real experiment design competition. Scientists and researchers from all over the country would kill for this same opportunity,” Trojanowski said.
“If we succeed, we will make history for RCC and the City of Riverside,” she said.
Trojanowski is searching for people to help fund the program. She is working with the RCCD Foundation to get the word out to possible funders.
In order for RCC to make its lifetime opportunity a reality, the college needs to have a committed funding of $20,000 by March 18.
