Program helps teachers reach for STARS

  • Published
  • By Andrea Brown
  • Academy Spirit staff writer
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  Here's what happens when you let 14 high school teachers loose at the Air Force Academy: they set off rockets and play with inflatable globes. And the plan is for it to rub off on their students.

Last week's intensive three-day seminar was the inaugural session of Space Technology Applications Reaching Students, or STARS. It's boot camp for teachers.

Instead of having a principal, the teachers had a brigadier general. Dr. Mike DeLorenzo, an Academy professor and retired brigadier general, taught the teachers the ABCs of rocket science.

"Some people would say, 'Well, you should be (teaching) the students,'" General DeLorenzo said.

"The paradigm the Academy has come up with, which I think is brilliant, is that if you reach one teacher, you reach hundreds of students. If you reach 14 teachers, we are going to reach thousands of students. And if we can get these folks excited about math and science and give them tools and resources that they can use in their classroom, they can get their kids excited."

Teachers got an out-of-this-world crash course on satellites, orbits and trajectories.

"I like the way they presented it, step-by-step, but then they give you the hook to be interested and make you think about it," said Mike Strobel, a teacher at Centennial High School in Pueblo.

STARS is a STEM program to expand the crop of future scientists.

"The country is facing an impending shortfall of engineers and scientists," said Dr. Billy Crisler, an Academy professor, STEM outreach coordinator and retired lieutenant colonel.

"It is a national problem, a big national problem. There's no national solution to it because every place is different. The same things that work here for these teachers and students don't work in Boston, and they don't work in Seattle. We are trying to figure out what our local solution is."

Nora Frederick, a chemistry teacher at St. Mary's High School in Colorado Springs, held the world in her hands. The inflatable globe was in a $1,000 science kit given to each teacher to use in the classroom. The box of tricks included Estes rockets and six hand-held Garmin GPS receivers.

"I can use all this as extra learning tools," she said.

Sponsors for the seminar included the National Defense Education Program, American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and the U.S. Navy. Local partners included Peak Area Leadership in Science, Cool Science and the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

The rockets were a highlight for Emily Anderson, Sierra High School physical science and zoology teacher.

"I can apply it to the curriculum. Rockets will be fun," she said.

Ms. Anderson and Claude Watters, a math teacher at The Classical Academy, were partners in the rocket launch contest.

"We didn't win for height," she said, "but we won for our parachute opening perfectly."
Rocket science?

No, said Mr. Watters: "Luck."