AIAA New England has two new initiatives this fall to support our STEM educators
1- offering $250 grants for supplies and equipment and
2- offering mentoring to high schools by a panel of members.
We ask that you consider recruiting K-12 STEM teachers and administrators you may know or be able to contact so that we can dramatically increase the number of Educator Associates in the section. Educator Associate membership is free. As you will see in the link, the process is simple: https://www.aiaa.org/get-involved/students-educators
Even if they do not apply for a grant nor respond to our offer for mentoring, being an Educator Associate opens up doors to many AIAA benefits. (Check out this NASA video on how to wring out a wet washcloth while on the Space Station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFPvdNbftOY. It is part of Micro-lesson number 95 in the AIAA Foundation’s Aerospace Micro-lessons and one of the most popular.) Here is the link to Foundation activities.
https://www.aiaa.org/get-involved/students-educators/k-12-teacher-resources.
1- $250 grants
We have sent requests for proposals to all of our New England Educator Associates and are evaluating those responses. Because we underspent last year as covid descended, we have funds to support this initiative with many more grants.
The request for proposals is attached. As you will see, we have two categories of schools being supported: typical schools and those which are under-resourced. Endri Lesha at fysiken.endri@protonmail.com runs this project and can answer questions.
If we have more funds available in mid-November, we will contact the science teacher associations in the six states in our section (VT, NH, ME, MA and RI) to complete our effort.
2- Mentoring
The New England Chapter of AIAA is starting a mentoring program and is currently looking for high schools that may want to partner with us. This could be a great opportunity for students that are interested in pursuing STEM careers who may not know what career pathways are available to them. The goal of this event is to make engineering feel more accessible and possible to any student who has genuine interest.
Mentorship would first take form as a virtual panel discussion, where there will be 3-4 panelists with a wide array of experience and backgrounds. The event would start with a brief presentation about engineering, and will be followed by a Q&A session. One highlight of the panel presentation will be a demonstration by Professor David Guo, chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Southern New Hampshire University of their new wind tunnel facility. Students will also have the opportunity to ask questions anonymously to encourage participation from everyone. This event can be personalized if there is a specific topic of interest and the event will be about an hour long.
If interested, please email qiana.curcuru@gmail.com, to coordinate details.