Students Enjoy Exhibit Center Tours

Although the National Space Symposium isn’t generally open to the public, a few lucky groups of young people do get the privilege of touring the exhibits each year.

Two different types of tours for 8th through 12th graders were conducted in the Ball Aerospace Exhibit Center and Pavilion this year: school tours for students of Space Foundation Teacher Liaisons and a limited number of tours for youth groups such as Boy Scouts, Civil Air Patrol and ROTC programs.

Student Tours
On Thursday, April 19, approximately 350 students from the classes of Teacher Liaisons from 12 schools experienced the excitement of space as they visited specially designated “destination booths” representing a wide variety of aerospace companies and organizations.

The involved Teacher Liaisons and their schools were:

• Chrystal Bloeman, Webber Middle School, Ft. Collins
• Cami DeBise, Jack Swigert Aerospace Academy, Colorado Springs
• Robert Fowler, Tesla High School, Colorado Springs
• Misty Garland, Wasson High School, Colorado Springs
• Kellina Gilbreth, Cheyenne Mountain High School, Colorado Springs
• Michelle Ginn, Falcon Virtual Academy, Colorado Springs
• Mary Gregory, Lewis Palmer High School, Monument
• Melissa Hornung, Palmer High School, Colorado Springs
• Jill Parker, Elizabeth Middle School, Elizabeth
• Jaclyn Roberson, Manitou Springs Middle School, Manitou Springs
• Peter Stauffer, Home School Teacher, Colorado Springs
• Susan Van’t Hul, Cripple Creek High School, Cripple Creek

Destination booths included: Aerojet; The Aerospace Corporation; AMPAC In-Space Propulsion; Analytical Graphics, Inc.; ATK; Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.; The Boeing Company; Braxton Technologies; International Space University; Maui Economic Development Board, Inc.; Missile Defense Agency; Lockheed Martin; Northrop Grumman; Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne; Raytheon; SES Government Solutions; Space Dynamics Laboratory; The SI Organization, Inc.; United States Air Force Academy; and Webster University.

Teacher Liaisons are extraordinary educators who use space-related education programs and principles in the classroom and act as advocates for space-based education in their schools and districts. If selected for the program, they receive Space Foundation training and resources to further integrate space into their classrooms – and those in the Rocky Mountain area are invited to bring their students to tour the National Space Symposium exhibit center; no other student groups are permitted to tour.

Youth Group Tours
In addition to the student tours, the Space Foundation can accommodate a small number youth group tours each year, on a first-come-first-serve request basis. Each of these tours began with a brief overview of the Soviet space artifacts that were on display at Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center’s exhibit.

See photos here.

This article is part of Space Watch: May 2012 (Volume: 11, Issue: 5).