FY 2019 Year 5 Extension Annual Performance Document

Utah Space Grant Consortium Lead Institution: University of Director: Dr. Joseph Orr Telephone Number: (801) 573-2091 Consortium URL: http://www.utahspacegrant.com Grant Number: NNX15AI24H

A. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program consists of 52 state-based, university-led Space Grant Consortia in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Annually, each consortium receives funds to develop and implement student fellowships and scholarships programs; interdisciplinary space- related research infrastructure, education, and public service programs; and cooperative initiatives with industry, research laboratories, and state, local, and other governments. Space Grant operates at the intersection of NASA’s interest as implemented by alignment with the Mission Directorates and the state’s interests. Although it is primarily a higher education program, Space Grant programs encompass the entire length of the education pipeline, including elementary/secondary and informal education. The Utah Space Grant Consortium is a Designated Consortium funded at a level of $760,000 for fiscal year 2019.

B. PROGRAM GOALS

Goal 1: In alignment with the NASA Internships, Fellowships, and Scholarships (NIFS) Line of Business, advertise and award Space Grant fellowships, scholarships, and internship awards to students enrolled in Utah institutions of higher education, thereby contributing to our Nation’s future workforce and fuel an increased interest in STEM disciplines.

SMART Objective #1: In 2019-20 we plan to award 20 fellowships at the graduate student level. All of these awards will be above $3,000 and therefore will be longitudinally tracked.

SMART Objective #2: In 2019-2020 we plan to award 38 scholarships at the undergraduate level. These scholarship awards will be below the $3,000 tracking level and therefore, not considered significant.

SMART Objective #3: Award four [added one additional internship with augmentation funds] undergraduate student internships at NASA Centers and Utah industrial institutions in the summer of 2020 at the new stipend level ($7,300) consistent with standard NASA internship stipend funding levels. Also award eight student internships in 2019-20 at local colleges and universities to students to perform an internship at the Hill Aerospace Museum for $1,500 each. In 2019-20 we plan to award a total of 12 internships to undergraduate students.

SMART Objective #4: Maintain 100% STEM retention of all fellowship/scholarship/ internship awardees receiving $3,000 or more significant awards through graduation. Goal 2: In alignment with the NASA STEM Engagement Line of Business, provide higher education opportunities in STEM education through new or revised courses, long and short duration workshops, hands-on student activities and competitions, and other relevant higher education opportunities. These opportunities will enable learners to acquire knowledge, understand what they have learned, and apply that knowledge through inquiry-based and project-based activities.

SMART Objective #5: During 2019-20, conduct 21 higher education projects annually through Space Grant academic affiliates across the state of Utah. All faculty and student participants will be in the STEM fields.

SMART Objective #6: Annually advertise and award competitive higher education minigrant opportunities for faculty members of our Consortium to benefit faculty/student teams at their institutions. We plan to award 10 [originally proposed 4 projects but increased it to 10 with base and augmentation funds] higher education minigrant projects to faculty/student teams in 2019-20. All faculty and student participants will be in the STEM fields.

Goal 3: In alignment with the NASA Institutional Line of Business, build and develop capacity of institutions for sustained STEM capabilities in topical areas of interest to NASA through research infrastructure opportunities within the Utah Space Grant Consortium. These research infrastructure opportunities will promote interaction with NASA Centers, other education institutions, and enhance competitiveness to perform STEM research and development. Research infrastructure activities will also enable early career faculty to focus their research toward NASA priorities.

SMART Objective #7: Annually advertise and award research infrastructure awards for junior faculty members of our Consortium as an investment in their space-related research and career development. All research funded will involve student participants. We plan to award three research infrastructure projects in 2019-20.

SMART Objective #8: All faculty receiving funding for research infrastructure awards will produce at least one publication or presentation for their results. In 2019-20, we expect at least three publications/presentations.

SMART Objective #9: In 2019-2020 we plan to target an average of 30 publications/ presentations per year from Space Grant supported students and faculty.

Goal 4: Assure that students and faculty participating in Utah Space Grant Consortium projects and activities are representative of the diversity of the State of Utah.

SMART Objective #10: Target the following percentages for diversity in NIFS (NASA internships, fellowship, scholarships) awards to students in our state: 40% awards to females and 16% awards to minority students annually.

Goal 5: In alignment with the NASA Educator Professional Development Line of Business, Utah Space Grant Consortium will attract and retain teachers in the STEM disciplines who have a solid understanding of the subject material. We will target engaging middle school teachers in hands-on curriculum enhancement capabilities through exposure to NASA scientific and technical expertise. The Utah Space Grant Consortium will aim to increase the use of NASA-related materials in classroom instruction and to increase the comfort level and proficiency of K-12 educators in teaching NASA-related STEM subjects.

SMART Objective #11: Annually advertise and award precollege projects minigrant awards for outreach and educational members of our Consortium which will target K-12 teachers and students. These awards will have an emphasis on engaging middle school teachers in hands-on curriculum enhancement capabilities. We plan to award three precollege projects in 2019-20.

SMART Objective #12: Annually conduct and participate in an additional eight pre- determined precollege projects at affiliate members of the UNSGC. These precollege projects will target K-12 teachers and students and we will develop relationships with two new schools each year where we implement NASA-related material into the classrooms at these schools.

Goal 6: The Utah Space Grant Consortium will provide organized educational activities outside of the established formal school system through the planetarium, museums and science centers located in the State of Utah. This will increase exposure to and knowledge of NASA-related content.

SMART Objective #13: Annually develop three sets of informal education standards-based STEM materials or displays to enrich visual and activity experiences by informal education providers. All UNSGC public service/informal education activities must support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy and education.

C. PROGRAM/PROJECT BENEFITS TO PROGRAM AREAS

RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE – Professors Daniel Maynes and Andrew Ning of Brigham Young University were funded for a competitive research seed funding project entitled: “Aerodynamic Investigation of Closely Spaced Propellers through Wind Tunnel Testing.” Improvements in battery technology are enabling aircraft with many small motors, instead of a few big motors, for improved efficiency and maneuverability. However, the aerodynamic behavior of closely spaced propellers is complex and not well understood. This work is using particle image velocimetry (PIV) to investigate the flow fields for rotors in close proximity. The collected data will be invaluable for model validation and for developing understanding of the detailed flow physics.

One M.S. student and one undergraduate researcher have been working on this project since August 2019, along with the faculty advisors at Brigham Young University. The students have successfully integrated a PIV system into a wind tunnel to measure fluid velocity fields. They have designed and fabricated, using 3-D printing, streamlined test apparatus that allow time-locked PIV measurements with two rotors that are mechanically synched. The design allows the separation distance between the two rotors to be easily varied. This will allow the first ever detailed PIV measurements for multiple rotors with the exact positioning of the propeller blades know relative to each other. In this manner the interactions between the propellers can be identified and systematic deviations between the propeller angular positioning can be explored.

Moving forward the students will mount the dual-propeller system into a wind tunnel. They will perform PIV measurements for the hover scenario, where there is no induced air speed. They will vary the spacing between the propellers and the relative angular position of the two propeller blades. They will then consider the forward flight scenario with an induced wind speed in the tunnel. The data will be used to benchmark numerical models of the same scenario and understand how the blade positioning (separation distance and angular positioning of the blades) affects the local flow physics.

HIGHER EDUCATION – Space Grant funding supported the Southern Utah University Rocket Club with a competitive higher education award. The goals for this year’s team was to increase technical capabilities and expand the reach of aerospace-related projects beyond just the rocket club. The SUU rocket club was able to secure a 3D printer which has greatly increased the prototyping capability of the team. The printer has been used to print avionics mounts and other brackets and small hardware. The propulsion team has used the printer to develop more complicated propellant grain geometries. Rather than center-perforated grains, the team expanded their simulation and prediction work and used the 3D printer to fabricate mandrel inserts for casting finocyl grains. While this could have been done using other fabrication methods, the 3D printer provided the incentive for the students to expand their thinking and pursue the new grain designs. Additionally, the airframe team has used these resources to greatly improve their fabrication methods. They purchased materials and fabricated a “mandrel spinner” to continually turn the composite tubes as the epoxy cures. This effort has been particularly useful to the club because this project was assigned to new club members, giving them the opportunity to involve students new to rocketry that felt uneasy starting into a rocket-development program.

The higher education award also allowed SUU Rocket Club to leverage the senior design class. Several of the seniors have an interest in aerospace careers. Thus, four of the seven senior design projects this year involve some aspect of aerospace and/or the rocket club. The teams are exploring everything from a supersonic rocket design (in preparation for the rocket club to attempt to compete in the IREC 30,000 ft category in the future), a rocket payload design and autogiros, and development of improved test capabilities for rocket motor static testing. The funding has allowed the students to design, prototype and test rather than just having paper designs. These projects have increased the students understanding of instrumentation and testing far beyond the normal classroom experience. As an example, the autogiro team has coordinated with our aviation school to drop their instrumented prototype from one of the SUU helicopters to test rotor spin-up and stability. Finally, the NASA award has supported the SUU engineering program to expand participation in the Utah Engineers’ Council (UEC) Engineers’ Week activities. Participating in these activities is difficult for SUU students due to the distance from the area. The additional funds from the NASA award supported student travel to participate these events, doubling our participation from previous years.

INFORMAL EDUCATION – FOCUS ON APOLLO 50TH ANNIVERSARY – Clark Planetarium hosted a five-day “From Launch to Landing” celebration, July 16–20, 2020. On-site and off-site events occurred throughout the celebration. Events were open to the public. Event partners included KUED, in conjunction with the release of their “Chasing the Moon” documentary series, and the Hill Aerospace Museum, in partnership with which Clark hosted Jessica Vos, a NASA speaker and Orion Spacecraft Systems Engineer. Space Grant funds were used to supplement the cost of travel for Jessica Vos, as well as craft materials for the Saturday event. The culminating event on Saturday, July 20th, was a full day of family-friendly activities celebrating the Apollo 11 Moon Landing anniversary with Clark Planetarium, KUED, Northrop Grumman, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Hex Printing, Salt Lake City Library, and the Girl Scouts of Utah. The celebration started with a free screening of PBS’s “Ready Jet Go! One Small Step” in the IMAX Theatre. The Clark Planetarium hosted Moon-themed arts and crafts stations along with a Moon gravity virtual reality experience and more.

D. PROGRAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS (SMART Objectives are numbered below each category)

a) NASA Internships, Fellowships, and Scholarships: 1. During FY 2019-20, we awarded 30 fellowships to graduate students, exceeding our goal of 20 fellowship awards. All 30 fellowship awards were significant awards and have been entered into the longitudinal tracking database.

2. During FY 2019-20, we awarded 44 scholarships to undergraduate students which exceeds our target of 38 scholarship awards. UTECH plans an additional 8 scholarship awards by the end of the grant year in May 2020 which are in the process of being awarded and finalized. After these additional awards, we will have awarded 52 scholarship awards for the year 5 (FY 2019-20) funding period. None of these scholarship awards are at the significant level and will not be longitudinally tracked.

3. We have been advertising opportunities to students for upcoming summer 2020 internships at NASA Centers and industry. We plan to fund five students for internships with Space Grant funding this summer. We plan to fund three students at NASA Centers and two students in Utah industry (one at Northrop Grumman and one at Space Dynamics Laboratory). We will select interns and allocate stipends for summer internships by May 2020 to students for the internship awards. We have already committed to supporting one student at the NASA Ames Research Center for the Aeromechanics Branch, one student at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and one student at NASA Langley Research Center. We have yet to identify the other two student interns but are in the process of doing so. The Hill Aerospace Museum has awarded 7 students in 2019-20 as interns at the Museum. These students began their internships in summer 2019 and continued for several months and into the academic year. All of the NASA Center and industry interns will be significant awards and the Hill Aerospace Museum awarded two significant-level internship awards. We will have a total of 12 internship awards for 2019-20 which meets our target of 12 total internship awards with year 5 funding.

4. All fellowship and scholarship student awardees to-date have maintained 100% STEM retention. We will continue to track fellowship awards into the future to monitor STEM retention. We plan to carefully review internship applications and select quality students who have goals for STEM careers and advanced degrees.

10. Of the total 74 fellowship and scholarship awards for FY 2019-20, 55% were awarded to female students and 39% were awarded to minority students. These accomplishments exceed our targets for this year for NIFS awards which were set at 40% to women and 16% to minorities. As stated above (#3), all of our internship awardees have not been identified yet, but we are currently at 43% to females and 0% to minorities for the 11 total internship awards. Our overall NIFS percentages to females and minorities will be exceeded this year when our final numbers are in. b) Higher Education Projects: 5. For year 5 of this grant (FY 2019-20), we funded 21 higher education projects. These higher education projects were carried out at the following affiliate institutions: University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State University, Weber State University, Southern Utah University, Utah Valley University, Snow College, State University, Salt Lake Community College, Westminster College, and The Leonardo. These projects included hands-on experiences for undergraduate and graduate students, GAS program involvement, astronomy, astrophysics, and astrobiology projects, student Olympiads, fairs and competitions, STEM education development performed by students, student research, curriculum development, research symposium, and developing new interactive displays. The faculty and student participants involved in each of the projects were all in STEM fields. The 21 total projects supported met our target for FY 2019.

6. We awarded 10 higher education minigrant projects through the competitive proposal opportunity to faculty/student teams in FY 2019-20 with both base and augmentation funding as follows: 1) W. Pratt Rogers, Utah Student Robotics, University of Utah; 2) Stephen Whitmore, Development and Testing of an Efficient Supersonic Rocket System, Utah State University; 3) John Sohl, Miniature Multi-sensor Array (mini-MSA) for Ground-to-Stratosphere Air Measurement, Phase II, Weber State University; 4) Scott Munro, SUU Rocketry Enhancements, Southern Utah University; 5) Bonnie Baxter, : Martian Analogue Research with Students, Westminster College; 6) Spencer Wendel, University Rover Competition ARES Team 2019-20, Utah State University; 7) David Fullwood, BYU Rocketry – 2019 IREC Participation, Brigham Young University; 8) J.R. Dennison, Amusement Park Physics Curriculum Development for USU Physics Day at , Utah State University; 9) David Allred, Sending BYU’s All of Team Leads in the RASC-AL Competition to the Final Presentation, Brigham Young University; and 10) Carl Sorensen, University Rover Challenge Capstone Project, Brigham Young University. These 10 competitive awards exceeded our goal to award four competitive higher education awards this year as augmentation funding allowed us to expand our original objective. We were able to fund 8 projects with base funding and then augment 6 projects as well as fund 2 additional projects with augmentation funding. So overall, we supported 10 higher education competitive projects in year 5 which was higher than our goal of funding four projects. c) Research Infrastructure Projects: 7. We awarded three research infrastructure minigrant projects to faculty members in FY 2019-20 as follows: 1) Foad Yousef, Early Detection of Harmful Algal Blooms in Alpine Lakes Using Drones, Westminster College; 2) Daniel Maynes & Andrew Ning, Aerodynamic Investigation of Closely Spaced Propellers through Wind Tunnel Testing, Brigham Young University; and 3) Richard Vanfleet, Improving of EUV Plasma Lamps via Collimators Based on Infiltrated Carbon Nanotube Forests, Brigham Young University. These three awards met our objective which stated we would fund a total of three projects in FY 2019-20.

8. All three faculty members who received research infrastructure funding in FY 2019-20 have produced or are in the process of producing at least one publication or presentation each from their work. They are continuing to work on additional publications and presentations that will be reported at the end of the funding period in OEPM reporting. 9. During FY 2019-20, Space Grant supported students and faculty have produced a total of 28 publications to-date and we plan another 40 publications at our annual Fellowship Symposium coming up in May 2020. Therefore, the total number of Space Grant publications will far exceed our goal of 30 publications/presentations per year in FY 2019-20. We will report all publications in detail in the forthcoming OEPM report for FY 2019.

d) Precollege Projects: 11. We awarded five precollege competitive awards in FY 2019-20 for outreach and educational members of our Consortium to target K-12 teachers with an emphasis on engaging middle school teachers in hands-on curriculum enhancement capabilities. The five precollege projects we awarded are: 1) Ali Siahpush, Two-day Middle School STEM Teacher Workshop, Southern Utah University, 2) Jaimi Butler, Study Astrobiology at the Lake with Teachers and Youth (SALTY), Westminster College; 3) J.R. Dennison, Support for USU Physics Day at Lagoon Amusement Park Physics STEM Outreach Activities, Utah State University; 4) Nicholas Hoffmann, Astronomy Resource Development for the New K-5 SEEd Standards, Clark Planetarium; and 5) Shannon Rupert, Spaceward Bound Utah; Training Teachers at the Mars Desert Research Station, The Mars Society. These five awards exceed our objective which stated we would fund a total of three projects in FY 2019-20.

12. The affiliates of UNSGC have also conducted an additional eight precollege projects in FY 2019-20, which met our goal of eight projects. These projects were carried out at affiliate members Southern Utah University, Snow College, Westminster College, and Clark Planetarium. These projects included teacher development workshops, demos and presentations for schools, hands-on science traveling K-12 shows, science outreach, math summer camp for females, NOAA Science on a Sphere program, and other precollege student training programs. We have also developed new relationships in FY 2019-20 with the following school districts where NASA-related materials have been implemented into their classrooms: Nebo, St. George, and Syracuse. These relationships were developed when Clark Planetarium presented workshops for teacher training through school district staff and the Utah State Board of Education. These three new relationships have exceeded our goal of two new school relationships this year.

e) Informal Education Projects: 13. Three sets of informal education standards-based STEM materials/displays were developed to visually enrich experiences in STEM by informal education providers. These included: 1) Electricity and magnetism resource kits and displays, Clark Planetarium; 2) Interactive displays developed on the adventures of human flight for the general public, The Leonardo; and 3) New exhibits and interactive experiences for the Leonardo on Wheels, The Leonardo. All public service/informal education activities in FY 2019-20 supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy and education. The development of these three sets of materials/displays met our target for FY 2019.

E. MILESTONES

a. All of the UNSGC milestones proposed for FY 2019 (year 5) of this grant award have been met to-date as proposed. A summary of our proposed milestones includes: (1) internal competitive solicitation opportunities released, proposals gathered and reviewed, and announcements of awards made from Jan to Apr 2019; (2) Apollo 50th anniversary events planned and affiliates selected to participate during Jan to Mar 2019; (3) Annual Meeting and Fellowship Symposium held in May 2019; (4) NASA award received and subcontracts issued to affiliates in April-May 2019; (5) Announce fellowship awards, gather applications and review, and announce fellowship awards during May to June 2019; (6) Announce scholarship awards, gather applications and review, and announce scholarship awards during Aug to Oct 2019; (7) Internship applications currently being reviewed in Feb to Mar 2020 and plan to issue stipends in Apr to May 2020; (8) All proposed projects which were pre-determined in our year 5 funding extension proposal were awarded funding and have been being carried out since the inception of award in May 2019; (9) Apollo 50th anniversary events were carried out from Jan to Jul 2019; (10) Student data award forms have been gathered on all student awards from May 2019 to present and are continued to be gathered as we award more internships and UTECH scholarships; (11) Longitudinal tracking has been ongoing from Jan 2019 to present as students are given awards and contacted through the EPSS system for regular updates; (12) Preliminary data was collected from Jan to Feb 2020 in preparation of our annual APD report submission in Mar 2020; (13) Final data on all funded projects will be gathered in summer 2020 in anticipation of submitting OEPM data in Jan 2021.

b. All milestones proposed were met to-date and those remaining are still on track for the timeline proposed. There is one deviation from our proposed milestone chart. We listed the final row as “Submit final report, NASA Grant NNX15A124H” by Aug 2020. We will replace that row with two rows to our milestone chart as follows: • Submit Annual Performance Data (APD) report, NASA Grant NNXZ15A124H – Mar 2020 • Request for a no-cost extension, NASA Grant NNXZ15A124H – Apr 2020 The APD report for FY 2019 will also serve as the final report on this grant.

F. PROGRAM CONTRIBUTIONS TO NASA EDUCATION PERFORMANCE GOALS

• Diversity: The Utah Space Grant Consortium has a goal to assure that students and faculty participating in Utah Space Grant Consortium projects and activities represent the diversity of the State of Utah. We have maintained objectives to support 40% females and 16% minorities when making student awards. During FY 2019 we issued 74 fellowship and scholarship awards. Forty- one of these were awarded to female students (55%) and 29 were awarded to minority students (39%). Utah’s largest minority sub-population is Hispanic and we are working together with affiliates Salt Lake Community College and Utah Valley University to better reach this population. We implemented a precollege/outreach program at the USU Southern Campus in FY 2017 and FY 2018. We have continued to work with the dense Native American population at this campus in Blanding, Utah, to bring NASA materials into the classrooms by giving workshops to both pre- service and in-service teachers. We have continued to work with these groups through the current year to expand programs in this part of Utah with a predominant Native American community.

• Minority Serving Institution Collaborations: We do not have any specific MSI institutions in the State of Utah. However, Salt Lake Community College and Utah Valley University have large Hispanic student populations with whom we have joint activities. We are working with these institutions to reach out to their campuses and provide opportunities for the minority groups. We are working together with USU Blanding campus to implement new scholarship awards as well as provide opportunities for students on that campus to come to the Logan campus in the summer to be mentored and gain experience in continuing their education to a four-year degree. • Office of Education Annual Performance Indicators: API 3.3.3: STEM 19-1 43 Significant direct student awards API 3.3.4: STEM 19-5 68 presentations and publications

G. IMPROVEMENTS MADE IN THE PAST YEAR

The Utah Space Grant Consortium has continued this year with our competitive program components in the areas of research seed funding, higher education projects, and precollege projects for affiliates to compete for additional funding. We have improved our internal solicitation process and worked to fine tune the request for proposals as well as the review process of the submitted proposals. We evaluate proposals for the competitive programs to make awards that are in alignment with our stated goals and objectives. This program of competitive funding within our state has proven to be valuable when it comes to reporting and gathering data as we have been able to expand the scope of our existing programs and add to the valuable annual data collection in Utah. For the 2019-20 funding year, we added one more competitive component to the opportunities in the area of “celebrations of 50th anniversary of Apollo” to fund events adding to the nationwide celebration of this anniversary event.

We added a new affiliate member, The Mars Society, to the Utah Space Grant Consortium, in May 2019. The Mars Society is an outreach institution and will be involved with the UNSGC K-12 and informal education portions of our grant. The Mars Society is a space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the Mars. Established in 1998, the group works to educate the public, the media, and the government on the benefits of exploring Mars and creating a permanent human presence on the red planet. Society activities include Mars analog simulations in the Utah desert, public outreach and educational programs such as the MarsVR virtual reality simulations, and the annual University Rover Challenge. As a new affiliate member, the Mars Society was able to submit a precollege proposal to the UNSGC precollege competitive opportunity in 2019 and they were funded for “Spaceward Bound Utah: Training teachers at the Mars Desert Research Station” with year 5 funds (FY 2019-20).

The Utah Space Grant Consortium has continued to improve the process whereby affiliates draw down funds in a timely manner and send invoices to the lead institution for reimbursement. This effort was part of an overall goal to improve the management of subcontracts on this grant. Although funds are all committed after our competitive award program and the distribution of funds as proposed, we still face the difficulty of getting affiliates to invoice for expenses on a regular basis even though progress was being made on projects. As requested by NASA, we have worked more closely with affiliates, reviewing projects proposed and expenditures to-date and sending them regular updates of invoices/payments/ balances to urge them to send in reimbursement requests more regularly. We are also actively tracking expenses and project balances and discussing them in a staff meeting held on a bi-weekly basis. We then formulate a plan for communication with affiliates and any action items/follow up that is needed.

H. CURRENT AND PROJECTED CHALLENGES

A current challenge as we near the end of our five-year grant is finishing all funded projects in a timely manner as well as receiving invoices from subcontractors in a timely manner. Some of our larger projects funded need additional time to finish project wrap up and report final data. The current COVID-19 situation may also postpone some of the projects and expenditures from now through May 2020. Therefore, we plan to submit a no-cost extension request to fully complete all projects that we committed to with FY 2019 funding. Another challenge we have in Utah is our affiliates submitting invoices in a timely manner after expenditures occur. The details of the paperwork of charges and matching funds sometimes make it difficult for affiliate trustees to stay on top of the submissions.

A challenge we have had with UNSGC competitive opportunities in the past year is a decline in the number of proposals we are receiving from affiliates for the competitive awards in research seed funding, higher education projects, and precollege projects. Our research seed funding wasn’t as “competitive” as it should’ve been last year in that we planned to fund three faculty members for these awards and we only received three proposals. Therefore, we are taking added measures to more broadly advertise these opportunities at affiliate institutions and encourage affiliate trustees to help us spread the word at their institutions and encourage faculty to apply.

In Utah, we have always requested to waive IDC on all of our Space Grant-related funding so that all of the NASA funds can be used for the purpose of the grant, specifically for student support and awards. As costs at our universities rise, it has become difficult to always secure the waiver of the IDC at our lead institution as well as affiliate institutions across the state. It is becoming increasingly important at our institutions to have the request or strong suggestion for waived IDC be built into the NASA solicitations in order for them to agree to the waiver or lower rates.

I. PROGRAM PARTNERS AND ROLE OF PARTNERS IN PROJECT EXECUTION

PhD Granting Research Universities Fellowships, Scholarships, Internships, Higher Education and Research Infrastructure projects (1) University of Utah; (2) Utah State University; (3) Brigham Young University

Industry Members Aerospace, defense and commercial products industrial partner (4) Northrop Grumman Propulsion Systems (formerly Orbital ATK)

Education Institutions Higher Education, Research Infrastructure, and Precollege projects (5) Weber State University; (6) Southern Utah University; (7) Snow College; (8) Dixie State University; (9) Utah System of Technical Colleges; (10) Salt Lake Community College; (11) Westminster College; (12) Utah Valley University

Government Centers Government partners, internship opportunities (13) Idaho National Laboratory; (14) Space Dynamics Laboratory; (15)

Outreach Institutions Internships, Precollege and Informal Education programs and projects (16) Clark Planetarium; (17) Hill Aerospace Museum; (18) North American Native Research & Education Foundation; (19) The Leonardo; (20) The Mars Society