For four days, 80 students from all over Virginia skipped a few grades and found themselves in college and having a BLAST.
The University of Virginia’s top science, technology, engineering and math educators, commonly known as STEM, gave rising ninth and tenth graders four days of immersion in the Building Leaders for Advancing Science and Technology program, also known as BLAST.
The program is a partnership between the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, which includes NASA; and UVa, Old Dominion University and Virginia Tech as well as the state.
The program offers students an entertaining entry into STEM studies.
“I’m not ready to go home yet,” one student said during a learning activity. “I’m literally learning with Legos.”
In addition to eating dormitory-style in the O-Hill dining hall and sleeping in assigned dorm rooms, the students participated in STEM Challenge Sessions, which are hands-on teamwork activities.
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“We focus on leadership and teamwork,” said Edward Murphy, UVa astronomy professor and one of the directors of the university’s partnership with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. “Each person is seen as a small part of the puzzle and each person has to communicate with the other to figure it out.”
The program has been inviting students to make themselves at home on UVa Grounds, college-style, for a four-day learning experience since 2013. The program was also held this year at ODU and Virginia Tech.
This year’s UVa program ran from July 31 to Aug. 3. Applications for next year’s BLAST programs will be accepted beginning in November and continuing through February 2023.
On an average day, the BLAST crew was divided into eight small groups and scattered around Grounds to learn from UVa deans, professors and researchers.
The groups participated in a rotation of challenge sessions, ranging from building and testing model trash vehicles to tracing epidemic origins using DNA sequencing project. There was even a spectrophotometry experiment involving “poison” Kool-Aid.
On the final day of the program, one group of eager students split into smaller groups for the competitive Mars rover simulator activity. The groups were charged with building remotely operated robots to explore an out-of-this-world location using Legos and other materials provided by Team 619 of the Cavalier Robotics, a Charlottesville-based high school robotics team.
“A lot of these activities take place in UVa lecture halls and economic buildings,” Murphy said. “The goal is for them to see themselves here.”
As if a weekend of the science fair projects of their dreams was not enough to write home about, Astronaut Kathy Thornton had an in-person chat about the Sights and Sounds of Space with the summer cohort.
It was through a combined effort from several ends of the UVa community that the students’ young minds had the chance to learn from some of the Commonwealth’s leading faculty, researchers and students in the areas of astronomy, physics, biology, forensic chemistry and engineering.
UVa chemistry students with the Learning through Experimentation, Awareness and Demonstration program presented The Amazing Chemical Circus, an education program developed to explain chemistry through theater.
Meanwhile, university biology majors taught BLAST students about the mechanics of rapid COVID tests by taking them entirely apart.
The BLAST program is just one way for rising and current Virginia high school students interested in STEM to join the NASA pipeline.
The Virginia Space Grant Consortium is a coalition of five Virginia colleges and universities, two NASA centers, state-educational agencies, including the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and the Virginia Community College System and Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology.
Other institutions participating represent diverse aerospace and high technology education, workforce development and research interests.
The Consortium offers a program for all high school students, including the Virginia Earth System Science Scholars, a residential NASA Academy; the Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholars summer academy and the Virginia Space Coast Scholars summer academy.