Fairchild tropical botanic garden, fairchild is proposing to develop, PILOT and implement the growing beyond earth challenge stem education program, gbec in collaboration with nasas exploration…

This federal contract award, valued at $1,246,054.00, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Inc. to develop, pilot, and implement the Growing Beyond Earth Challenge (GBEC) STEM education program. The GBEC program is designed to engage middle and high school students in South Florida in botany experiments that can inform future NASA research on growing plants in space.

The contract, which runs from October 2016 through September 2021, builds upon Fairchild's existing Fairchild Challenge science education program by providing training, materials, and technical support to local schools to conduct plant experiments under simulated space-based constraints. A pre-pilot phase of the program has already engaged over 3,000 students across 69 middle schools and 55 high schools. This contract does not have a set-aside designation, indicating that Fairchild competed for the opportunity in an open market.

Fairchild tropical botanic garden, fairchild is proposing to develop, PILOT and implement the growing beyond earth challenge stem education program, gbec in collaboration with nasas exploration research and technology programs and miami dade county public school district, mdcps. Gbec will begin october 2016 and extend through september 2020. Gbec is designed around botany experiments that may help inform future NASA research on growing plants in space. IT will be integrated into the established fairchild challenge science education program, which trains local K12 teachers at fairchild to implement stem projects in their classrooms. Fairchild will provide training, materials, research protocols, and technical support for middle and high schools across miami dade to conduct plant experiments under some of the physical constraints of growing plants in space. Fairchild and NASA are currently conducting a technical feasibility study (pre-PILOT) with 124 south florida middle and high school classrooms as a test of gbec project hardware, research protocols, and data collection methods. To date, more than 3,000 students in 69 middle schools and 55 high schools have participated in the gbec pre PILOT. Students conducted in-classroom experiments with 36 varieties of edible plants, including 22 that have never been evaluated by NASA. From teachers participating in the pre PILOT, fairchild has collected preliminary survey data regarding anticipated stem education outcomes.