Stem-related K-12 outreach through high-altitude balloon program collaborations

Abstract

A university that develops a program with the capability to launch, chase, and recover helium-filled high-altitude balloon satellites (BalloonSats) enables a number of undergraduate research possibilities. The program faculty and the undergraduates served can also form the engine of an exciting and effective vehicle to perform K-12 outreach related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Nearly identical to weather balloons, low-weight BalloonSats can affordably carry student experiments literally to the edge of space. When the outreach effort is extended and a partnership between the university program and a K-12 classroom forms, the outreach can be transformed from a series of "fire and forget" activities into a genuine, standards-based, educational component. This paper describes the collaboration between Oregon Institute of Technology's (OIT's) BalloonSat program (LaunchOIT) and Ferguson Elementary School in Klamath Falls, Oregon (Ferguson School). LaunchOIT is an affiliate of Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium's1 (OSGCs) "LaunchOregon" BalloonSat program. The paper presents some history relating to LaunchOIT, the enabling underpinnings of the OSGC, the OIT-Ferguson School collaboration structure (including some data related to student participants and performance), the benefits of the program collaboration, and how the program looks to sustain itself, particularly considering the auspices of NASA's educational mission as exercised through the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program2 (Space Grant) efforts. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2007.