The second educational component will create summer internships for HSST (and sometimes undergraduate science majors) for research participation. The students will join the NSU faculty and GSFC staff in research projects at GSFC or at Jefferson Lab. Our goal is to increase the awareness of HSST of astrophysical research. By participating in research, they will experience what a professional astrophysicist does everyday. Such experiences create a solid confidence level which will aloow HSST to convey that information, and hopefully the excitement of research and discovery, to their pupils.

About five of our best HSST will take two credits during the summer on “Special Topics in Astronomy”. The work for this class will take place at Jefferson Lab or at GSFC. At the end of the four weeks course (starting after the Fourth of July), they will be expected to produce a written report and give an oral presentation on their projects. Some of the projects will be oriented to create educational kits that could be then implemented in their respective school.

One of the planned projects will be the construction of “cloud chambers” for detection of cosmic rays. Our faculty and GSFC staff will develop the specific technology. We would like to create a robust chamber to visualize secondary cosmic rays. HSST will provide some of the manpower to build the chambers during the summers. They will then be able to take those chambers back to their respective schools. Funding for the chamber materials is expected to come from other GSFC outreach budgets (i.e., ACCESS education/outreach budget).

HSSTs will be paid tuition and an stipend for the four week summer courses. HSSTs going to GSFC will receive additional stipends for housing and travel.

More information will follow as programs become initiated.