Applications are open for a program for young women interested in space systems engineering.
SpaceTrek is a residential summer program at Morehead State University for 9th through 12th grade girls. This year it’s scheduled for June 9 through the 22. The program is offered through MSU’s Center for STEM+eXcellence, and it aims to empower young women to pursue college and career opportunities in aerospace.
Jen Carter is the Director for the Center. She said the two-week program will allow participants a chance to engage in a curriculum that’s akin to an actual space mission to measure the temperature of the atmosphere.
“Girls undergo hands-on, laboratory activities where they understand their system, the understand the science, and then they become ground station operators, and they erect their own portable satellite tracking station on the roof of the Space Science Center,” she said. “They take that scientific instrument that they’ve built, they tether it to a helium-filled balloon and launch it, and they conduct that mission themselves.”
Carter added SpaceTrek doesn’t only nurture the scholar in the participants, the program has empowerment woven into the curriculum.
“We address the girl as a whole person. The empowerment comes not exclusively from the academic challenge, although a lot of it is related to the academic challenge,” she said. “We also consider issues that teenage girls face today that prevent them from being their best selves.”
Carter said applications are due by March 31, and selections will be made by April 15. More information is available on Morehead State’s website.