Posted on: June 28, 2018
POC: David Des Marais
Branch / Organization: Exobiology Branch (Code SSX)
Short Story:
This past May Red Bluff High School in northern California hosted its tenth annual evening recognition night and public lecture to honor the twenty junior and senior students who successfully completed the Astrobiology Intern Program. This course is a partnership between Lassen Volcanic National Park, Red Bluff High School, and NASA Ames Research Center scientists. The program began in 2008 with the overall goal of improving science literacy and increasing interest in space science and STEM disciplines. The following attributes have made this program successful: 1) It is a partnership between the Ames science team, Lassen Volcanic National Park Division of Interpretation, and Red Bluff high school teachers,
2) Students develop personal relationships with early career and senior scientists as mentors and as role models, and
3) Students perform full-circle, inquiry-based research to understand functional relationships between natural microbial communities and their environments.
The course starts with learning new content and skills and is followed by field observations and sample collection in Lassen Volcanic National Park, developing hypotheses, performing laboratory experiments, drawing conclusions, and presenting their findings in both a written report and a formal oral presentation. Their presentation to the Red Bluff community was the centerpiece of the May event.