Season Stalcup, a Wheeler science teacher, is one of four educators from the Cobb County School District to be named to the 2019 NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program.
Stalcup, also an assistant coach for the Wheeler softball team, is among 28 in Georgia, and Cobb is one of 14 district in eight states with teachers who were selected to participate.
Here’s what CCSD is sending out about the program:
The NASA Ambassador program is a professional development opportunity for high school science teachers designed to improve science teaching and learning and increase student engagement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
As ambassadors, the Cobb teachers will join fellow educators from California, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, and two from Columbus, Georgia for training in astrophysics, planetary science content, and pedagogy. Their training will include a week-long immersion experience at NASA’s science research aircraft facility in Palmdale, California with participation in research flights onboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
SOFIA is a highly modified Boeing 747SP airliner fitted with a 2.5-meter (100-inch) telescope and using a suite of seven cameras and spectrographs to study celestial objects at infrared wavelengths. SOFIA operates during 10-hour overnight science missions at altitudes between 39,000 and 45,000 feet (12-14 kilometers), above more than 99 percent of the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere that blocks infrared light from reaching ground-based observatories.
After their training, the Cobb teachers, with the help of program staff, will implement a NASA science-oriented electromagnetic spectrum and infrared astronomy curriculum module in their classrooms. The module is developed by the SETI Institute, which has managed the Ambassador program since its inception in 2011. Cobb’s teachers are part of the first NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors class open to teachers outside of California.
“We are so proud of the teachers that were selected to be a part of the Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors Program,” said Christian Cali, Cobb County School District science supervisor. “Their experiences flying into the stratosphere on NASA’s SOPHIA will provide Cobb students with a chance to make real-world connections with the concepts they are learning in the classroom.”
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