FAIRMONT, W.Va. – Students from area middle schools will have the opportunity to learn about several of the NASA missions that NASA’s Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) Program have worked on and are currently working on when they visit the I-79 Technology Park Research Center for NASA’s Day in the Park on October 11th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and on Thursday, October 12th from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Day in the Park is an invitation-only event which invites approximately 600 7th grade middle school students to the I-79 Technology Park to experience Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Day in the Park’s primary objective is to mitigate the national trend of declining student interest in scientifically-oriented disciplines.
The event will be hosted by the NASA IV&V Program’s Educator Resource Center (ERC) and will feature carnival-style booths that will cover various NASA missions, including NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in hands-on activities, ranging from rocket building and launching, to robotics. The NASA IV&V Program’s ERC provides the hands-on experience at each of the STEM-focused stations and provide engaging and informative explanations of each of the activities.
This event will also feature guest speaker and Emmy-nominated science TV host, Emily Calandrelli. Calandrelli has been a correspondent for the Netflix original Bill Nye Saves the World and is a producer and the host of FOX’s Xploration Outer Space. She is also a guest science writer and host for Discovery News and covers the space industry as a writer for TechCrunch. Calandrelli is a West Virginia native who grew up in the area with an educational background is in engineering and policy.
Through a partnership with Fairmont State University, the ERC provides resources and training opportunities to prepare thousands of K-12 teachers and support the existing teacher workforce. The ERC staff also provides free workshops, both on-site and partner-hosted locations, as well as annual summer institutes for educators on a variety of topics to supplement the curriculum to help meet national and state educational standards.
For more information about guest speaker Emily Calandrelli, please visit: http://www.thespacegal.com/
For more information about the NASA IV&V Program’s ERC, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ivv/education/index.html
If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview, please contact Bailee Miller at 304-476-4301 or email at bailee.r.miller@ivv.nasa.gov.