Together with NASA armstrong flight research center, our consortium of hispanic serving california community colleges and california state university partners proposes a program that consists of three…

This is a $749,922 cooperative agreement awarded by NASA to the Napa Valley Community College District (NVCCD) to develop and implement a STEM curriculum for community college students that will increase their interest and participation in university engineering programs and NASA-related career pathways.

The "RISING DATA" program consists of three integrated elements: 1) developing a one-semester course that provides hands-on flight project experiences for students, 2) conducting professional development workshops for instructors, and 3) offering student summer internships at NASA and partner university facilities. The program aims to widen the pathway to engineering, support STEM student success, and increase representation of Hispanic and female students in STEM certificate programs at the participating California community colleges and state universities. No set-aside was used for this award.

Together with NASA armstrong flight research center, our consortium of hispanic serving california community colleges and california state university partners proposes a program that consists of three integrated work elements, developing curriculum for a one semester course for community college students that will increase interest in university engineering programs and NASA related career pathways by providing hands on flight project experiences, conducting week-long professional development workshops for participating instructors prior to offering the course at collaborating community colleges, and student summer internships at NASA armstrong flight research center, NASA ames research center, sonoma state university, california state university, fresno, university of california, berkeley and university of california, SAN diego that will further develop the students stem skills and involvement in NASA programs. External evaluation of all three of these elements will be performed, along with limited longitudinal studies of participating students. The rising data stem course will: widen the curricular pathway to engineering that is available; support the success of students in stem degree programs; and help to increase the number of traditionally under represented students who complete stem certificates at the consortium colleges, with a specific focus on hispanic and female students. Our core leadership team has many years of experience mentoring and inspiring these two populations of students, and will leverage hardware and software assets developed through previous NASA funded programs and external resources to support the flight projects in the rising data stem course community college students will learn how to: program microcontrollers for example, arduinos, build experimental payloads for flight projects, and acquire and analyze data in a laboratory setting. Students will also work in teams to build a flight vehicle such as a balloon gondola, rocket, or simple unmanned aerial vehicle, and will test fly their payloads, acquiring in flight telemetry. By the end of the semester, students will analyze and present the results of their flight measurements to their peers. The process of designing, building and implementing the electronics and participating in building flight vehicles will enhance the students comprehension of theory learned in the engineering physics and other lower division courses taught in california community colleges. These courses comprise the core curriculum that articulates with university engineering programs. The rising data program will immerse students and faculty in nasas mission and unique assets while providing focused, real world experiences for the students. By engaging the students in project based learning led by community college faculty and offering wellpaid summer research internships with university and NASA partners, the rising data program will provide two of the key factors that have been shown to have the most success in increasing graduation rates of under-represented undergraduate stem students.