Texas a & m international university (tamiu), a hispanic serving institution, proposes an educational trip to the kennedy space center as part of the summer 2010 minority student education forum.…

Texas a & m international university (tamiu), a hispanic serving institution, proposes an educational trip to the kennedy space center as part of the summer 2010 minority student education forum. Student participants will be recruited and selected from the university's outreach and educational programs which include student participants from the 7TH grade to 12TH grade interested in stem careers. The trip to the kennedy space center will provide students with a unique opportunity to learn from and speak to adults working in technology and research jobs as they help build our nation;.s space program. This experience ties in well with the fundamental goal of our current outreach programs to help minority students from educationally and/or economically disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in a program of post-secondary education leading to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) fields. The visit to the kennedy space center will provide learning opportunities that will build a more solid knowledge base in stem subjects for our students, encouraging them to take the next step in pursuing their educational interests. Selected participants in the project will have the added responsibility of giving something back to their respective community campus sites. Each school group will be responsible for encouraging their students to select a specific topic for further study and submit a paper on their NASA sponsored activities to their science or math department. Student papers and research will be considered a work in progress and will be posted on the t amiu office of special programs website. Participating students will also be encouraged to continue to pursue their interests in science and mathematics and will be invited to share their research and papers at a math and science symposium in the spring of 2011. In this way, the students exposed to real-world experiences during the visit will be able to share the importance of becoming a scientist or engineer with their classmates. By participating in this trip and the educational activities proposed, students will discover how mathematics, engineering, and science are tied in with exciting careers in research and technology. The hands on experiences our students will have as part of their visit to the kennedy space center will help our students see the correlation between space technology and their lives right here in laredo, texas.