GSFC Mentor Overview
Padi Boyd Associate Director Astrophysics Science Division NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard at a glance
• NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is home to the na on's largest organiza on of scien sts, engineers and technologists who build spacecra , instruments and new technology to study Earth, the sun, our solar system and the universe. • Just outside Washington, Goddard is home to Hubble opera ons, the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, and many other space science missions in opera on, development, or archived. New kids on the block! • Our first year in NAC • Added somewhat late in the game (December 2014) • Couldn’t find someone to be lead mentor • Had to get our Office of Educa on onboard • Slammed by snow storms, inscrutable process requirements, difficulty recrui ng mo vated mentors • Ended up cobbling it together, giving it our best shot, learning as we go NAC GSFC 2015 Astrophysics Division • Lead mentor: P. Boyd Student Home Inst Mentor Project Junellie Gonzales UMCP Dwek, Staguhn, GISMO maps, Arendt galac c center Ameer Blake Howard U Roberge Exoplanet CubeSAT planning Qiana Hunt* UAH Hewi Fermi pulsar wind, blazar Cee Gould UCBerkley Venters Fermi energe c par cle starburst galaxies *Awarded John Mather Scholarship, which pays the cost of travel of Goddard intern to a end conferences and present their research. The Mentors
Johannes Staguhn Jack Hewi
Aki Roberge
Toni Venters Eli Dwek Rick Arendt The NAC interns
Cee Junellie Qiana Ameer 2015 schedule • June 1st arrive GSFC, orienta on, group lunch • June 8th-12th Python boot camp • June 20th- Hubble Night at GSFC Visitor Ctr • June 25-26 DC/MD/VA Astrophysics Summer Mee ng • July 7th GSFC Science Jamboree • July 9th White House Tribal Youth Gathering • July 18-20th East Coast Cohort Visit • July 23rd- Hubble Day at Goddard • July 30th –intern poster session • Aug 6th-NAC student organized movie viewing • August 7th-last day of program Extra Added Bonuses • Roundtable chat with John Mather • NAC outreach at White House Tribal Youth Gathering • Science Jamboree • Hubble Day, including talks by Charlie Boldin, John Grunsfeld and John Mather • Lab tours---missions and instruments in dev • Poster session presen ng final projects to Center • Ice cream social • Pizza party with division director Joan Centrella • Q&A with recent postdocs and grad students • GRAD-MAP lunches • Inclusive Astronomy and WIA ac vi es
What worked?
• Students and projects! • Leveraging off nearby efforts: GRAD-MAP, NPP, local events (tribal summit, astrophysics summer mee ng) • Weekly mee ngs • Interns making connec ons with each other, graduate students, other interns Some of our challenges • NASA’s exis ng internship process and structure is required, different than the NAC process, and slowed down ge ng offers out. Students had to apply to two different systems (NASA and NAC). • Exis ng schedule for interns is already full of ac vi es and enrichment ---made it tough to add enough NAC- only ac vi es. NAC students did a great job picking up the slack here---thank you! • Research topics and mentors were very diverse ---hard for mentors to really back each other up. • In spite of these challenges ---students and mentors all had a very posi ve and rewarding experience. Looking toward future
• Want to con nue and expand the program! • Mentors will hold an a er-ac on review, looking for areas to improve. • We will collect some addi onal feedback from the students. • We will reach out to other science divisions and engineering to see if addi onal NAC cohorts can be created across Goddard. • Look for ways to simplify the applicaton process.