Great story - did not know this was happening here!
From Seattle station KUOW:
Why NASA Called The Northwest Indian College Space Center
It started out as a joke.
The students at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham were launching little rockets made from recycled water bottles as a way to do some hands-on science.
Computer science teacher Gary Brandt says calling it a “space center” was just something one of the students came up with.
“And he said, ‘I called us the Northwest Indian College Space Center,'” Brandt said. “I was kind of dumbfounded, basically. And I said, 'OK, let’s do that. That’s kind of grandiose. Let’s really play it up.’”
The joke was funny because this was just a tiny, two-year college, with no engineering program. Getting into space was the last thing on the minds of these students; they were just trying to escape poverty. Next thing they knew, NASA was calling them up.
And the telephone call from NASA:
“She introduced herself and said, ‘I didn’t know you were big enough to have a space center,’” he said. “And I, of course, choked and chortled and told her the story of what happened. And she said, ‘Be that as it may, you are doing what we want, and that’s to get underrepresented students involved in science, technology, engineering and math programs.’”
NASA would give them $5,000 a year for three years. It was enough to get them to take themselves seriously.
The students began entering competitions. Each year, NASA organized a different challenge.
Such as, reach a specific altitude and take scientific readings from the atmosphere. Or use a robot to collect a soil sample, put the sample in a rocket, and prepare the rocket for launch – all with no help from humans.
Big schools like MIT and Vanderbilt University came to the competitions with fancy equipment: digital scales, specialized aluminum parts and fancy servo motors.
Northwest Indian College used discarded computer parts, bubble levels and mouse traps.
Irons said they worked with what they had.
Very cool!
Wisconsin hosted a First Nations Launch program last weekend - nice to see Science and Engineering promoted like this.
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