Nash Community College Student Selected to Visit NASA this Spring

Nash Community College Electronics Engineering student Brandy Martin Ward has been selected to travel to NASA’s Stennis Space Center this spring to participate in the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars project (NCAS). She was selected as one of 240 community college students from across the United States to be part of NCAS.

The five-week scholars program culminates with a three-day on-site event at Stennis Space Center and offers students the opportunity to interact with NASA engineers and others as they learn more about careers in science and engineering. While at NASA, students form teams and establish fictional companies interested in Mars exploration. Each team is responsible for developing and testing a prototype rover, forming a company infrastructure, managing a budget, and developing communications and outreach. The on-site experience at NASA includes a tour of facilities and briefings by NASA subject matter experts.

NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars is a project funded in part by the Minority University Research and Education Program, or MUREP, which is committed to the recruitment of underrepresented and underserved students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to sustain a diverse workforce.

With this project, NASA continues the agency’s tradition of investing in the nation’s educational programs. It is directly tied to the agency’s major education goal of attracting and retaining students in STEM disciplines critical to NASA’s future missions, which include missions to Mars and beyond.

For additional information, please contact National Community College Aerospace Scholars by email at JSC-NCAS@mail.nasa.gov or by phone at 281-483-0493. For more information, visit: http://ncas.aerospacescholars.org/ or www.nasa.gov/education/murep.