Space Grant research
Ninth annual Delaware Space Grant research symposium held at UD
1:01 p.m., March 30, 2015--The Delaware Space Grant Consortium (DESGC), of which the University of Delaware is an affiliate, held its annual symposium Friday, March 20, at the Trabant University Center to highlight research work that is being done by Delaware students with funding support from NASA.
NASA’s Space Grant program was started by congressional mandate in 1989 in order to ensure that NASA would continue to have access to a well-trained workforce of US citizens in the areas of interest to the agency’s missions. These areas include science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- the so-called STEM fields -- and geography.
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Each year since 1989, Congress has appropriated up to $40 million per year to NASA to administer the national Space Grant program.
Within each state, a consortium of colleges, universities and industrial partners collaborate to award fellowships, scholarships and internships to deserving graduate and undergraduate students in the STEM areas. Space Grant funds are also used for in-service training of pre-college STEM teachers.
In Delaware, the consortium includes the following academic affiliates: University of Delaware, Delaware State University, all four campuses of Delaware Technical Community College, Wilmington University and Wesley College.
U.S. citizens at any of these institutions are eligible to apply once every year for three types of funding:
- Graduate fellowships (including a stipend of $27,000 per year);
- Undergraduate tuition scholarships (up to $3,000 per year); and
- Summer research internships (up to $3,500 on campus, and up to $6,000 at one of the 10 NASA Field Centers which are spread across the country).
During the current year, consortium funds are supporting five graduate fellows, nine undergraduate tuition scholars, eight undergraduate summer researchers and four workshop participants.
At the annual research symposium, students present results, either orally or by poster, of the work they have performed under Space Grant auspices during the past year.
About 50 people attended the event at the Trabant University Center, during which oral reports were presented by graduate fellows from UD’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment; a graduate student from Wilmington University’s math/science education technology department; undergraduate researchers from UD’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Biological Sciences; and undergraduate teams of students from Delaware State University and Delaware Technical Community College.
Announcements of opportunities for fellowships, scholarship, and internships are circulated to all affiliates of the consortium in December-March each year.
Information about Space Grant opportunities is available at the website and Facebook page, and informational flyers are circulated throughout the state via an affiliate representative on each campus.
On the UD campus, information can be obtained from faculty members in the College of Engineering (Bingqing Wei, professor of mechanical engineering); the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (Xiao-Hai Yan, Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor of Marine Studies, and Tracy DeLiberty, chair of the Department of Geography); and the Department of Physics and Astronomy (William H. Matthaeus and Michael A. Shay, professors, and Harry L. Shipman, Annie Jump Cannon Professor of Physics and Astronomy).
For further information about NASA’s Space Grant program in the state of Delaware, contact Cathy Cathell in the consortium office, Room 212 Sharp Laboratory on the UD campus in Newark, telephone 302-831-1094.
Photos by Evan Krape