Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last week championed a bill that advances Arizona’s space priorities, in part by supporting the University of Arizona’s NEOCam mission and the, which will include Arizona State University’s “Mastcam-Z” mounted camera system.

“By investing in America’s leadership in space, our bipartisan bill strengthens our national security and creates economic opportunities for Arizonans,” Sinema said.

Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., also backed the bill.

Before finalizing the bill — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2019 — Sinema met with Arizona stakeholders, including leadership from and, to ensure the bill secures her state’s priorities.

Thursday, Sinema voiced her support for important partnerships between NASA and Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­niversities at a Senate Aviation and Space Subcommittee hearing. She is a ranking member of the subcommittee.

Sinema also emphasized a strong need for an effective science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education pipeline to continue advancing the nation’s space and national security interests.

“NASA and universities must work together to develop a 21st-century workforce to continue our leadership in space and ensure our economy remains innovative and strong,” she said.

Sinema requested the hearing in order to highlight the value of NASA’s partnerships with ASU, UArizona and Northern Arizona University.

The senior senator invited Dr. Linda Tarbox Elkins-Tanton, an ASU professor who is leading the, to share her experiences as a principal investigator and the way her work advances NASA’s scientific and exploration goals, creating opportunities for students to develop skills that help them succeed in the space industry.

According to Sinema’s office, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2019 will do the following:

• Ensure NASA can establish University Affiliated Research Centers — long-term research partnerships with universities that lead NASA projects and missions,
• Give NASA contract authority to partner with universities on missions that help university space programs grow,
• Establish the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which will fund the construction of UArizona’s Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam),
• Require NASA to create an outreach program to encourage high school students to pursue STEM careers, building Arizona’s space workforce,
• Direct NASA to complete the James Webb Space Telescope — a follow-up to the Hubble Space Telescope that includes UArizona’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) — as soon as possible,
• Authorize NASA to complete its Mars 2020 mission — ASU’s Mastcam-Z is the main navigation camera on the Mars 2020 rover — and work on the Mars Sample Return Mission, and
• Require NASA to provide funding for small satellite launches conducting science missions, such as the ones developed by ASU, UArizona and NAU.

The post Sinema introduces NASA bill, supports STEM education pipeline appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.

For more than 60 years, a nonprofit academy started by 150 Arizona-based scientists has stimulated science research to benefit the Southwest and nudged students out of their shells into science careers, many in Arizona.

This year, the academy reached across the border for the first time to include students from the Universidad AutĂłnoma in Baja California, Mexico.

Today, the organization is called the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science. Nevada-based researchers and universities joined in 1977 to unify scientific interests for the unique desert region.

Research from both states is published in the academy’s peer-reviewed journal of scientific research, the Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Science Academy.

Students, teachers given steps up

Each year, the nonprofit academy hosts an annual conference where faculty, students and others lecture about their research. High school and college students have the opportunity to receive scholarships, grants and awards, and awards are also given to outstanding teachers and leaders in science.

Students are encouraged to network with other students and potential employers.

“The annual ANAS conference is one of the most student-friendly regional scientific conferences in the country,” said the academy’s board president, Paula Rivadeneira, a professor in the Department of Soil, Water, & Environmental Science at the University of Arizona in Yuma.

“For many of our students, it is their first time traveling away from home and their first time public speaking,” she said. “All students are eligible for awards, which is amazing for their self-esteem and professional development.”

Famous ANAS scholarship recipients

Many scholarship recipients have gone on to have major impacts in Arizona and the world.

Among them is the late Milton Sommerfeld, the “Wizard of Ooze.” Sommerfeld conducted groundbreaking research involving algae as a professor at Arizona State University and served as co-director of the .

Much of his legacy lies in the inception of the Laboratory of Algae Research and Biotechnology, the first national test bed for outdoor algae cultivation. Sommerfeld was instrumental in developing the Algae Testbed Public Private Partnership, which researchers and companies use for third-party technology verification.

Another famous recipient is the late Peter Ffolliott, a professor emeritus of watershed management at the University of Arizona in the

Ffolliott’s work in watershed, forestry and sustainable natural resource management has impacted communities and natural resource managers worldwide.

Yuma: shining star in agriculture highlighted this year

At the annual ANAS conference, participants learn about research on topics such as desert soil enrichment, plants that thrive in extreme heat and the Zika virus.

This year, the event was held in Yuma for the first time, highlighting the city’s prosperous farming community.

Known as the Lettuce Capital of the World, Yuma produces 90 percent of all leafy vegetables grown in the nation from November through March. Its agribusiness sector pumps $3.2 billion into the local economy annually, according to the .

The source of that impressive output lies in cutting-edge technology and rich soil, fed by sediments deposited by the Colorado River over millions of years.

“Our farmers are brilliantly smart. They understand everything about agriculture, from agronomy to advanced mathematics, to figure out how much fertilizer they need, what plant pathogens they are dealing with and how much of our scarce resources, like water, they need to use,” Rivadeneira said. “They really are very science-based, but not many people think of farming that way.”

Inviting university students from Mexico

This was the first time the academy extended an invitation to students in Mexico.

“With all of the negative news about our border, particularly here in Yuma County, I felt strongly about reaching out to my colleagues to the south to let them know that we value them as neighbors and as scientists,” Rivadeneira said.

In another first, local businesses paid all students’ conference costs in exchange for free advertising at the event, she said.

Energizing the academy’s work to promote science careers

Rivadeneira said she is working to create more public awareness and excitement about the academy as it nears its 65th anniversary in 2021.

“There is a renewed excitement about ANAS these days, because we are recruiting younger, more technologically-savvy board members and implementing new and innovative ideas to make our annual conference an even more exciting professional development and networking opportunity for students,” she said.

About ANAS

ANAS is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization. Its is comprised of professors, researchers and scientists from colleges, universities, organizations and agencies from Arizona and Nevada. Scholarships, grants, awards and events are all supported by membership dues and private donations.

To learn more about the academy, .

The post Nonprofit academy has fueled science education in the Southwest for 60+ years appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted Phoenix College nearly $1.5 million to support integrating research, mentoring and industry collaborations to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) recruitment and retention among minority students at the college. The grant comes as part of the first round of grants from the NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions program, also known as the HSI program.

“The National Science Foundation has a strong commitment to promoting the health, prosperity and welfare of the nation by broadening participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said Dr. Talitha Washington, co-lead program director of the NSF HSI program.

Phoenix College had to meet a rigorous set of merit requirements to be chosen for the competitive HSI grant.

“All proposals for HSI funding go through NSF’s gold-standard merit review process that identifies which projects to support,” Washington said. “That process considers both the technical aspects of a proposed project and its potential to contribute more broadly to advancing NSF’s mission.”

Phoenix College is part of the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), one of the largest community college systems in the United States. Out of a total of 10 campuses, all of which are regionally-accredited, six are now designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and more will follow.

“What is really great about our colleges is that we serve a large percentage of Hispanic students, and many of them are first-generation college students,” said Robin Cotter, professor of biosciences at Phoenix College and one of the primary project team members who authored the NSF grant proposal.

Maricopa Community College faculty used their free time to form the grant proposal in the hope that they might introduce their students to more research opportunities that will better prepare them for the workforce, Cotter said.

“Many of us come from research backgrounds, and we know that helping our students make connections with industry and university partners is key to their success as they move along that pathway toward their career,” Cotter said. “So we decided to take our free time — we weren’t paid to do this — and we worked together to develop this application. It included faculty from biology, psychology, math, geology, physics; and we all worked together to develop this proposal that then competed at the national level.”

This is the first time this particular grant has been offered by the NSF to HSIs nationwide. Among the applicants were community colleges and universities, including Research I (R1) Universities — highly competitive research institutions. The grant will fund Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) for students at Phoenix College, and the program is expected to impact more than 3,000 community college students.

The MCCCD schools have teaching laboratories but no independent research labs, inadvertently withholding vital opportunities from students hoping to find careers in STEM fields. The CURE model inserts research directly into community college coursework.

“We decided that since we couldn’t give our students independent research opportunities, we were going to embed it into our curriculum,” Cotter said. “And nationwide, they’re telling us that embedding practical applications of knowledge is the best way to teach students and prepare them.”

Phoenix College is already partnering with local businesses and governments to create opportunities for students to build practical skills. At the request of industry leaders, the college is making workforce training a core part of its curriculum, putting students in touch with industry partners within the first two years of their academic careers.

“I’m really excited to say that we’re partnering with the City of Surprise and their water treatment plant,” Cotter said. “We’re going to identify ways that we can look for micro-plastics and other pollutants in our water system, and then we’re going to have the students work on ways of removing them in order to improve water quality across the region.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is another partner. Students who work with the USDA will look at the impact of environmental factors, including pesticides, on the survival of crop pollinators such as honeybees.

“The honeybee population is important to the agricultural community here in Arizona and nationwide,” Cotter said. “So we’re going to be working with the USDA, based out of Tucson, and the students will be studying what actually impacts honeybee health and how this can be resolved so that we can maintain these pollinators that are necessary for our agricultural community.”

One of the NSF’s goals is to gain a better understanding of how to enhance undergraduate STEM education at HSIs, Washington said.

“The HSI program seeks to increase the number of STEM undergraduate students, who ultimately will become STEM professionals,” Washington said. “It seeks to increase retention and graduation rates for STEM students at HSIs and to increase the number of STEM educators and students at HSIs that have little or no prior NSF funding.”

Phoenix College received the NSF grant as the result of faculty-driven collaboration between all 10 MCCCD campuses, Cotter said.

“We recognize the need to train our students for the workforce, and that it’s really built on community partnerships, and we encourage anybody who wants to be involved to reach out to us,” Cotter said.

The post Phoenix College receives $1.5 million grant to support STEM education for minorities appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.

First launched in 2012, the Rural Communities Expansion Project (RCEP) at the Arizona Science Center took aim at the lack of science, technology, math and engineering (STEM) programs and resources in rural school districts throughout Arizona. The goal was to create a hands-on learning environment in these small schools and communities and expand the footprint of technology in the classroom.

Fast-forward to 2018 and the program now reaches schools in Cottonwood, Oak Creek, Humboldt, Winslow, Prescott, Sedona, Tonopah, and Florence. And now, the RCEP is getting another much-needed financial boost with a sizeable $1 million grant from the APS Foundation.

The program focuses on providing fun and active opportunities for teachers and students to combine creativity with STEM skills. When it comes to STEM resources, rural communities have traditionally been lacking.

“Many times, teachers in the rural areas are tasked with teaching more than one subject and simply lack the confidence to execute lesson plans,” says Dr. Rob Robertson of the Science Center. “What our academic coaches provide is more background on lessons/subject, ideas of how to better instruct and overall how to inspire and engage their students to really enjoy STEM.”

According to the Science Center, the RECP provides “professional development for teachers, training for administrators and half-day student programs featuring hands-on STEM projects such as a mobile planetarium, catapult construction, and roller coaster building.”

The six-year partnership between the APS Foundation and the Arizona Science Center has only gotten stronger with the grant. It will help sustain the program for the next five years and allows an expansion into Cochise and Yuma counties. Altogether, with this new grant, there has been nearly $2.5 million awarded to the program as it helps K-8 teachers and students with STEM projects and all-day events.

This past December, Holbrook Unified School District put together a six-day STEM-based program packed with STEM activities.

A huge push behind supplying education and resources in the rural communities that goes beyond bolstering science in the classroom is to prepare students for better jobs in the future.

“Our future workforce depends on the youth of today as technological advances continue to change the landscape of our society, economy and jobs, so it is imperative that students have access to quality STEM programming so they don’t fall behind in school and eventually in the workforce,” says Robertson.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the career outlook for STEM employment is projected to grow by about 13 percent by 2022. Moreover, the  touts that STEM workers will see a pay advantage compared with non-STEM workers, even with similar education levels.

At this point, the Science Center’s program has helped more than 400 teachers bring STEM education through active learning opportunities to 10,500 students. Altogether, 15 schools and nine districts have been impacted by this and have seen a growth in interest in STEM. These districts were targeted due to lack of resources for STEM education, and now represent the growing development of tech in the classroom.

“As we empower teachers (and administrators) to better understand the STEM subject they are teaching and provide them with the tools to be successful,” notes Robertson, “they are more likely to stay in the classroom for many years to come and create that continuum of consistency to provide students with a better education.”

The post Arizona Science Center receives $1 million grant for STEM education appeared first on Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­.