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In November, I attended the Space Grant Director's Meeting in Omaha. As usual, it was a very informative meeting, which is held twice a year. The Directors of all Space Grant Consortia gather to meet with Dr. Julius Dasch of NASA Headquarters to discuss Space Grant issues. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell everyone about what I learned from this meeting
The good news from Julius was that after months of congressional committees and subcommittees deliberating on the necessity of our national space programs, the budget for the Space Grant appears to be more or less intact while many other NASA programs have been cut substantially. Julius attributes this to three things. First, Space Grant is in all states. Second, the degree of cost sharing is significant. Third, the Space Grant program has an outside review committee. The bad new is that, at this writing, the appropriation bill for NASA has not been passed by Congress, and our funding for the next budget year will, no doubt, be delayed.
Also announced at the Omaha meeting was that next year, three of sixteen Program Grant State Consortia (of which Minnesota is one), will have a chance to move up to the more highly-funded level of Designated State Consortia, of which there are currently twenty one. Reaching this status will be on a competitive basis. More details should be forthcoming. Julius stressed that Space Grant Consortia should, where possible, cooperate with industry, JOVE, EPSCoR, and SBIR programs. Julius also emphasized a few additional points that we should keep in mind, such as, the importance of the 1999 self-evaluation; it will be critical to the Space Grant's future viability. Also, we need to make sure that when Space Grant faculty, fellowship, and scholarship recipients' names appear on papers that they be identified as associated with the Space Grant. Finally, the annual reporting process is extremely important to the future of the Space Grant. Having timely and accurate information about our programs and their costs assists in proving that the Space Grant is a program worth keeping.
When comparing our program with others at the same funding level, I believe that the MnSGC is working hard to meet NASA's expectations. For example, NASA is very interested in connecting K-12 students and teachers to the Internet, and the newly-developed "Orienting Educations to Internet," under the direction of Gordon Hoff at MN/DOT, is a terrific example of how we can reach out to K-12 students and their teachers. This new workshop is highlighted on the following pages. Another expectation NASA has of Consortia, as mentioned above, is that we will work to create collaborations with industry. To meet is goal, at our fall meeting of all MnSGC Affiliates, we formed a subcommittee to begin working on a proposal that can be submitted to industry to obtain their support of our programs. One possible area of cooperation is to create internships for high school and college-level students.
I hope you enjoy this issue of "The North Star";. It is designed to highlight
the MnSGC's dedication to undergraduate and graduate research. We are planning
our first state-wide conference for April 1996 which is designed to give all undergraduate and graduate students a chance to present their research findings as recipients
of scholarships, fellowships and research assistant ships. The one-day conference
is planned for the day following our Annual Sverdrup Visiting Scientist Program,
which this year sponsors Visiting Scientist Dr. Nei Tyson. Dr. Tyson is a member of the research
staff and a lecturer of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University
and is the Acting Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum in New York. He is currently conducting research on "The Galactic Bulge: Chemical
Evolution, Abundances and Structure." We are very much looking forward to his
lecture, which is scheduled for Monday, April 22, 1996, at 8:00p.m. in Foss Center
on Augsburg's Campus. Hope to see everyone there.
William L. Garrard
Director
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| K-12 Outreach Activities |
| Undergraduate Research |
| GSFC NASA Academy |
| MSFC Nasa Academy |
| Graduate Student Research |