FY 2018 Year 4 Extension Annual Performance Document

Utah Space Grant Consortium Lead Institution: University of Director: Dr. Joseph Orr Telephone Number: (8081) 573-2091 Consortium URL: http://www.utahspacegrant.com Grant Number: NNX15AI24H

Lines of Business (LOBs): NASA Internships, Fellowships, and Scholarships; STEM Engagement; Institutional Engagement; Educator Professional Development

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 2018.

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 2018-19 we plan to award 20 fellowships at the graduate student level. All of these awards will be above $5,000 and therefore will be longitudinally tracked. SMART Objective 2: In 2018-2019 we plan to award 26 scholarships at the undergraduate level. These scholarship awards will be below the $5,000 tracking level and therefore, not considered significant. SMART Objective 3: Award undergraduate student internships at NASA Centers and Utah industrial institutions each year at a stipend level ($6,000) consistent with standard NASA internship stipend funding levels. Also award student internships at local colleges and universities to students to perform internship at the Hill Aerospace Museum for $1,500 each. In 2018-19 we plan to award 12 internships to undergraduate students. SMART Objective 4: Maintain 100% STEM retention of all fellowship/scholarship/internship awardees receiving $5,000 or more significant awards through graduation.

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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 2018-19, conduct 20 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 5 higher education minigrant projects to faculty/student teams in 2018-19. 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 2018-19. SMART Objective 8: All faculty receiving funding for research infrastructure awards will produce at least one publication or presentation for their results. In 2018-19, we expect at least three publications/presentations. SMART Objective 9: In 2018-2019 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 fellowship and scholarship awards to students in our state: 40% awards to females and 30% awards to minorities 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. 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 precollege awards will have an emphasis on engaging middle school teachers in hands-on curriculum enhancement capabilities. We plan to award five precollege projects in 2018-19.

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Goal 6: The Utah Space Grant Consortium will aim to increase the use of NASA-related materials in classroom instruction, increase the comfort level of elementary-level educators in teaching STEM subjects, and increase proficiency in NASA-related STEM subjects for middle and high school educators. SMART Objective 12: Annually conduct and participate in an additional five 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 7: 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 – Dr. Eric Hintz of University was awarded a research infrastructure seed funding award entitled “First Hand Knowledge of Exoplanets and the Stars They Orbit.” The process of building up the telescopes on the observation deck of the Eyring Science Center at BYU has been moving forward over the past several months. They currently have three of the five systems operational and taking data. This includes 8”, 10” and 12” telescopes. The 5” telescope is just waiting for the CCD to arrive and it will be ready for final testing and to enter full research operations. Some of the telescopes have already taken data that has appeared in publications of KELT transiting planet targets, with the first data for a NASA TESS target being taken on January 30, 2019. BYU anticipates more TESS targets as the satellite moves to the northern sky. Because they have been very successful so far, it is also planned to move a larger telescope from West Mountain down to the campus deck. This would be a high quality 12” telescope and is being replaced on the mountain by a 16” telescope. By summer 2019, it is planned to have all 6 telescopes running on campus, just in time for full northern TESS operations. In addition to KELT and TESS targets, the telescopes have contributed to other research efforts for open star clusters, pulsating variable stars, and some standardization work. The vast majority of this data has been performed by undergraduate students and data from these systems was part of at least three posters recently presented by those students at an American Astronomical Society meeting (January 2019, in Seattle, WA). It is expected that this work to appear in publications sometime in the near future. As development of the observation deck began, BYU found that it truly was seed funding, which is leading to even further development of our observational capabilities. The development of the observation deck provided support for a grant proposal to replace our aging campus 16” telescope. They received a $65,000 grant from the Mt Cuba Foundation to install a 20” telescope in our campus dome. But, with the help of the university and some other funding, they are going to install a 24” robotic telescope with a cost of about $97,000. Clearly, the

3 original NASA funding is causing other good things to happen. In addition to the new telescope, they also have the funds to automate the dome so that we can let the telescope be truly robotic and take data independently. This will help faculty and students be more productive in general. This overall program will have nine operational telescopes ranging from 5” to 36” allowing for a longer observing season, generating more data, and resulting in more student projects. Those projects will lead to student publications and trips to national meeting to present their results. However, BYU faculty feel this could go even further. Since they are removing our current 16” telescope, they are looking for ways to transfer it to some smaller state universities to give them a research telescope, that could also potentially be used by high school students in the state. They are in discussions to try to make this happen. The last step in the process will be seeking grant funding to allow recruitment of at least two graduate students to drive the programs even further. Submission of the first of these proposals will be in the first quarter of 2019.

HIGHER EDUCATION – Professor Gary Stewardson of Utah State University was awarded a higher education grant to support the “NIFA ROAVcopters Challenge” project. ROAVcopters, is focused on leveraging emerging quadcopter technology to teach crucial 21st century skills while providing students with a fun and exciting elementary, middle, high school, and college after school competitions. Currently, ROAVcopters has developed an open quadcopter curriculum for grades 4 – 8, and is working on a Python-based curriculum for programming the Parrot Bebop 2 targeted at grades 9 – college. These competitions require students to manually fly, autonomously control, and remotely acquire data using quadcopters during skill challenges. USU’s team goal to establish these competitions at the national level and possibly international.

At the high school and college levels, skill challenges involve a relay race, autonomous control, and computational thinking. Students are required to design a mounting system that safely secures the ROAVcopter sensor package to the quadcopter. Teams are then required to program their drone through obstacles to designated field elements and report pertinent data from specific field elements.

In an effort to keep up with the increasingly industrial application of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), postsecondary institutions are beginning to develop UAS programs around the region. This has led to organizations like the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA) to adopt UAS style competition events in their regional SAFECON (safety competition) events. With the support from Space Grant, USU was able to support the following NIFA affiliated colleges and universities to participate in the demonstration of the collegiate-level ROAVcopter Challenge: Utah State University, United States Air Force Academy, Metro State University, Colorado Northwestern Community College, and Rocky Mountain College. We were able to fully fund a team from all five of the aforementioned schools.

An unanticipated outcome of the NIFA ROAVcopter demonstration event was the excitement of a spectator event, similar to that of a football game. As the nature of NIFA competitions revolve around safety and flying, competitions typically occur at a distance and are unobservable to nonparticipants. Since the ROAVcopter event occurred in a single hanger, comradery amongst teams was also observed. Entire schools comprised of twenty or more

4 students showed up and support their individual teams of three to five students who competed in the ROAVcopter event. Response from NIFA regional leadership reflected the fun and engaging atmosphere that the ROAVcopter event was able to produce and indicated the need for the national NIFA organization to adopt more engaging competitions like ROAVcopters. This demonstration competition was so successful that two other NIFA regions are looking at adopting ROAVcopters into their events and ROAVcopters has added a college division for all students.

PRECOLLEGE – From 2016-2018, Clark Planetarium received funding to develop inquiry- based curriculum to teach about electricity and magnetism. Teacher workshop sessions on this curriculum include training on content and pedagogy, as well as a materials resource kit with all the materials necessary to conduct the curriculum activities.

Due to consistent demand by 5th grade teachers for effective professional development in electricity and magnetism content, Clark Planetarium requested funding from the Utah Space Grant precollege award program to produce 30 resource kits and offer two workshops. One workshop session will take place in a school district along the Wasatch Front, while the second workshop will be offered in a rural Utah school district.

Only one resource kit will be distributed to each school represented at the workshop. Because of this restriction, individual kits are more likely to serve multiple teachers and classes per school. This restriction also frees up additional kits to serve more schools. After both workshops are complete, any remaining kits will be used to offer a third workshop session.

Based on past workshop attendance, we expect 30 kits to serve about 45 teachers via workshops. With class sizes of approximately 30 students each, this project could serve more than 1,350 students in its first year. Based on the lifetime of these kits and the collaborative use of materials between teachers, these kits could serve more than 10,000 students.

D. PROGRAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS: • NASA Internships, Fellowships, and Scholarships (NIFS): SMART Objectives: 1. During FY 2018-19, we awarded 28 fellowships to graduate students, exceeding our goal of 20 fellowship awards. All 28 fellowship awards were significant awards and have been entered into the longitudinal tracking database.

2. During FY 2018-19, we awarded 26 scholarships to undergraduate students which meets our target of 26 scholarship awards. However, UTECH plans an additional 14 scholarship awards by the end of the grant year in April 2019 which are in the process of being finalized and awarded. After these additional awards, we will have awarded 40 scholarship awards for the year 4 (2018-19) 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 2019 internships at NASA Centers and industry. We plan to fund three students with Space Grant funding this summer. We had proposed to fund four students at $6,000 stipend-

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level but then were later notified that the stipend level is increasing to $7,300 for undergraduate students beginning fall 2018 so we will have to reduce the number of students we can support. We plan to fund one-two 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 our $24,000 budget for summer 2019 internships by April 2019 to student stipends for the internship awards. The Hill Aerospace Museum has awarded 14 students in 2018-19 as interns at the Museum. These students began their internships in summer 2018 and continued for several months and into the academic year. We will therefore have exceeded our target of 12 internship awards once we’ve selected our internship students for summer 2019 with 2018-19 (year 4) funding. We will have a total of 17-18 internship awards for 2018-19.

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 watch 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 fellowship and scholarship awards for 2018-19, 52% were awarded to female students and 31% were awarded to minority students. These accomplishments exceed our targets for this year which were set at 40% to women and 30% to minorities. As stated above, all of our internship awardees have not been identified yet, but we are currently at 50% females and 7% minorities for internship awards.

• Higher Education projects: SMART Objectives: 5. For year 4 of this grant (2018-19), we funded 21 higher education projects. These higher education projects were carried out at the following affiliate institutions: University of Utah, , Utah State University, Weber State University, Southern Utah University, Utah Valley University, Snow College, Dixie State University, Salt Lake Community College, Westminster College, and The Leonardo. These projects included hands-on experiences for undergraduate and graduate students, 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 exceeded our target of 20 projects in FY 2018.

6. We awarded six higher education minigrant projects through the competitive proposal opportunity to faculty/student teams in 2018-19 as follows: 1) Gary Stewardson, NIFA ROAVcopters Challenge, Utah State University; 2) Stephen Whitmore, Design, Development, and Flight Test of a Restartable Green Hybrid Rocket Thruster System, Utah State University; 3) Jonathan Davies/Kaitlin Hall, Utah Student Robotics, University of Utah; 4) Bonnie Baxter, MARS: Martian Analogue Research with Students, Westminster College; 5) David Fullwood, BYU Rocketry 2018 IREC Participation, Brigham Young University; and 6) John Sohl, Miniature Multi-Sensor Array (MiniMSA) for Ground-to-Stratosphere Air Measurement, Weber State

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University. These six competitive awards exceeded our goal to award five competitive higher education awards per year.

• Research Infrastructure projects: SMART Objectives: 7. We awarded four research infrastructure minigrant projects to faculty members in 2018-19 as follows: 1) Eric Hintz; First Hand Knowledge of Exoplanets and the Stars they Orbit, Brigham Young University; 2) Christian Hearn, Open Source Antenna Pattern Measurement System, Weber State University; 3) Matthew Linford, Expanding the Range of Aluminum-Coated Mirrors into the LUV (Lyman UV) for Spaced-Based Observations, Brigham Young University; and 4) Troy Munro, Improved Temperature Control for Accurate DNA Analysis with 3D Printed Microfluidic Devices, Brigham Young University. These four awards exceed our objective which stated we would fund a total of three projects in 2018-19.

8. All four faculty members who received research infrastructure funding in 2018-19 have produced at least one publication or presentation each from their work. They are continuing to work on additional publications that will be reported at the end of the funding period in OEPM reporting.

9. During 2018-19, Space Grant supported students and faculty have produced a total of 25 publications to-date and we plan another 40 publications at our annual Fellowship Symposium coming up later this spring. Therefore, the total number of Space Grant publications will far exceed our goal of 30 publications/presentations per year in FY 2018. We will report all publications in detail in the forthcoming OEPM report.

• Precollege projects: SMART Objectives: 11. We awarded seven precollege competitive awards 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 seven precollege projects we awarded are: 1) Nicholas Hoffmann, Electricity and Magnetism Teacher Resource Kits, Clark Planetarium; 2) John Vanderford, Meteorite Program, Utah State University; 3) J.R. Dennison, Support for Physics Day at Lagoon Amusement Park Physics STEM Outreach Activities, Utah State University; 4) Brian Newbold & Daniel Morwood, VEX Robot Competition Hosting, Snow College; 5) Kathryn Smith, Ian Shelledy, and Sarah Murphy, Physics is Fun: Developing a Physics Demonstration for K-8 Students and Teachers, The Leonardo; and 7) Duane Merrell, Jack Horner Dinosaur Symposium, Brigham Young University. These seven awards exceed our objective which stated we would fund a total of five projects in 2018-19.

12. The affiliates of UNSGC have also conducted an additional six precollege projects in FY 2018, which exceeded our goal of five projects. These projects were carried out at affiliate members Snow College, Westminster College, Clark Planetarium, and Southern Utah University. These projects included teacher development workshops, demos and presentations for schools, hands-on science traveling K-12 shows, science

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outreach, math summer camp for females, and precollege student training programs. We have also developed new relationships in 2018-19 with the following four school districts where NASA-related materials have been implemented into their classrooms: Carbon, Emery, Grand, and San Juan. These relationships were developed when Clark Planetarium presented a workshop at the Utah Rural Schools Association (URSA) Conference. These four new relationships have exceeded our goal of two new school relationships this year.

• Informal Education projects: SMART Objectives: 13. Four sets of informal education standards-based STEM materials/displays were developed to visually enrich experiences in STEM by informal education providers. These included: 1) “Stellar Playground” digital interactive program lets guests explore stellar evolution on a giant touchscreen by dragging and combing stars to create even more massive objects, Clark Planetarium; 2) Interactive display where guests try to move a ton of weight to simulate moving one cubic centimeter of dwarf star material, Clark Planetarium; 3) Exhibit that lets guests manipulate plasma with magnets and magnetic fields, Clark Planetarium; and 4) Leonardo on Wheels (LOW) program which included 15 interactive science exhibits, The Leonardo. All public service/informal education activities in FY 2018 supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) literacy and education. The development of these four sets of materials/displays exceeded our target of three sets for FY 2018.

E. 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 30% minorities when making student awards. During FY 2018 we issued 54 fellowship and scholarship awards. Twenty-eight of these were awarded to female students (52%) and 17 were awarded to minority students (31%). 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 of students.

We have also implemented a precollege/outreach program at the USU Southern Campus in FY 2017 and FY 2018. We worked with the dense Native American population at the USU campus in Blanding, Utah to bring NASA materials into the classrooms by giving workshops to both pre-service and in-service teachers. We plan to continue to work with these groups through the coming year to expand the programs in this part of the State 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

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for the minority groups. We are working together with Utah State University-Blanding campus to implement new outreach programs and provide opportunities for students on that campus. Their campus is made up of a high Native American population.

• Office of Education Annual Performance Indicators: o API 3.3.3: STEM-18-1 68 o API 3.3.5: STEM-18-5 65

F. IMPROVEMENTS MADE IN THE PAST YEAR: Two years ago, the Utah Space Grant Consortium implemented new competitive components to our program for affiliates to compete for additional funding in higher education and precollege awards. Utah had already implemented this program in 2014 for research infrastructure funding. We developed internal solicitations as follows: (1) higher education component included student projects and competition, senior design projects, and curriculum development and (2) precollege component included K-12 teacher development and outreach projects. We have continued to refine our internal solicitations this year and we continue to 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 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.

This past year, we were able to expand our fellowship symposium poster session to include demonstrations and displays and we set up tables and areas for students to showcase their hardware and designs. This resulted in our affiliate representatives and students being able to view the actual rockets for the BYU Rocketry Team, the rovers of the Utah Robotic Mining Team and the BYU Mars Rover Team, the VR viewers video produced by the WSU Harbor Team of the 2017 solar eclipse, and the aircraft built by the USU DBF team. Attendees at the Symposium were also able to witness live events as these teams demonstrated their hardware. This session has proved valuable for the students and faculty in attendance and has created networking opportunities for future projects. This event also created opportunities for teams to report and showcase their projects and research.

This year we have improved 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 faced 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.

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G. CURRENT AND PROJECTED CHALLENGES: A current challenge as we near the end of our 4th year of funding on this grant is the uncertainty of when we will receive our 5th year of funding and future funding on this program. Due to the lapse during the government shutdown and the current fiscal situation, we assume the funding for the 5th year of this grant will be delayed. The uncertainty of funding at the federal government level makes it difficult for us to advertise, gather proposals, and make timely competitive awards for the upcoming year and plan ahead for successful programs. It is also difficult to make a plan to draw down all of our current funds and keep staff funded while not knowing our budget levels and timeline. It is also increasingly difficult to have expenses and cost of living increase, while the amount of funding we’ve been receiving stays the same or decreases. It is a challenge to strive to keep our program effective and accomplish the same or more with less resources and to still meet the goals and objectives we have set forth.

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 training. 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.

H. 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 (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) Hill Air Force Base

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.

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