Kyle Blasch, co-sponsored by Geoscience and the USGS

The goal of this outreach program is to emphasize the benefits of integrated natural, global, and space sciences and how we currently observe and manage our planet Earth. The outreach program I propose targets patrons of all ages of the Coronado National Forest. Mt. Lemmon and Sabino Canyon, located within the Santa Catalina Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest, offer a spectacular glimpse of the sky island ecosystems characteristic of the Southwest. Each year approximately 500,000 patrons enter the boundaries of the Forest to take part in a variety of activities, soaking in the richness and beauty of these environments. Many of these patrons visit the park for leisure and recreational activities, but a large number (especially patrons from outside the Tucson area) visit the Forest as ecotourists. I will plan and develop multimedia presentations for the visitor centers, guided hikes, campfire and amphitheater talks, and CNF publications. I will also assist in developing exhibits for the visitor centers, future trail signs, and hands on laboratories for younger patrons. Finally, I will help develop an outreach chapter on their web page to include a list of outreach activities and a calendar of events. The content of the exhibits is targeted at hydrology, ecology, and management in the 21st century using space sciences.

The outreach program at Sabino Canyon is progressing on schedule. Accomplishments to date include the successful archiving of outreach media (slides, National Weather Service images, USGS flow data, and water quality into a digital format. A portion of this media was incorporated into a natural history and ecology presentation. Since the beginning of January the talk has been given an average two times a week to patrons of all ages. The presentation is going through a final revision with attached notes for final placement on the Sabino Canyon web site. In this form it will be available for teachers to download for class instruction.

The hydrology presentation is almost complete and will be used to educate the Friends of Sabino Canyon on March 16, 2001 who often overlap as interpretive volunteers at Sabino Canyon. A shorter watered-down version of the talk will also be used for the visitor center and placed on the website.

A short remote sensing talk is in production and upon completion of the previous talks will be finished. After talking with several volunteers it became obvious that more provocative talks are required at Canyon for frequent patrons and the Friends of Sabino Canyon. Thus we are accumulating topics such as species reintroduction, fee programs and forest funding, water resources, and forest management in an urban setting for a challenge series of lectures and discussions.

Finally, the presentations are being altered for use in field trips and campfire talks. Overall the response to the presentations has been great. Patrons from Tucson and from afar are amazed at the diversity and ecological wonders displayed by Sabino Canyon.

Fall 2001 Update

The program includes the creation of multimedia presentations for the visitor centers, guided hikes, campfire and amphitheater talks, and CNF publications. The program also will help develop exhibits for the visitor centers and trail signs when necessary. Finally, the presentations will be developed for addition to the web page.The benefits of this program are outreach opportunities for both NASA's global climate change and remote sensing programs as well as the ecological and climatological wonders of the Coronado Forest.

After one years time the outreach program is on track and expanding. Three visitor center presentations have been created highlighting the natural history, water resources, and remote sensing. Recently Sabino Canyon hired a new outreach representative and together we have organized a 2-hour Saturday morning hike focusing on water issues. The hikes and visitor center presentations have been announced in the local Tucson and Phoenix papers. We hope this part of the outreach program will grow. We will be adding more hikes this fall during the day when the weather is a bit more pleasant.

Usually I volunteer on Saturday, as this is the busiest day, however I have supplemented this with visits to schools and an Earth Day activity as a representative of Sabino Canyon. Currently I am designing an exhibit, which will combine the continuous stream flow measurements at Sabino Creek with a description of seasonal, historical, and monsoon flow. I am working on a cost estimate for the project and writing a proposal to solicit funds.

Carrie Morrill, co-sponsored by Geoscience.

My outreach project is to develop and carry out a program designed to familiarize middle school or high school students with the scientific method and with several issues related to climatic change and variability. In this program, students will carry out a scientific experiment to test the following hypothesis: the amount of winter rainfall in Tucson varies with the state of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. To test this hypothesis, students will collect several types of data. These include precipitation amount for the current winter measured in their own rain gauges, precipitation amount for past winters available from the internet, and information about the state of ENSO gathered from satellite data. Students will "publish" our results on our own web page.

In the beginning of the school year, I will work for several months with a well-established education outreach project, the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) project, to learn about developing a successful inquiry-based curriculum. I will also use this opportunity to develop contacts with teachers in the Tucson Public School District. After working with teachers to tailor my proposed project to the abilities and interests of a particular age level, we will initiate the project in their classes.

This summer, I attended a workshop for GLOBE teachers to learn how this program is used in the classroom. This fall, I visited Ms. Suzanne Maly's middle school class (Grades 6-8) at Safford Middle School several times a week to help students with their GLOBE activities. The students collect temperature, humidity, cloud cover and precipitation measurements from their weather station and enter their data into the GLOBE server. These measurements will be used by scientists to study topics such as global warming. This winter, Ms. Maly and I have begun leading a discussion of the students' GLOBE results during one class each week. Each week, the students examine a different set of graphs and try to make sense of their results. Our goal is to give the students practice in critical thinking and asking questions. This spring, we plan to have the students turn their questions into hypotheses that they will test using the meteorological data that they have collected. We hope to share our experiences (successes and failures) with other GLOBE teachers in order to make it easier for them to initiate similar projects in their own classes.

Fall 2001 Update

My first step in carrying out my outreach project was to work for several months with a well-established education outreach project, the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) project, in order to learn about developing a successful inquiry-based curriculum and to develop contacts with teachers in the Tucson Public School District. In the summer of 2000, I attended a workshop for GLOBE teachers to learn how this program is used in the classroom. I began visiting a middle school classroom (Grades 6-8) several times a week the following fall and spring and I helped students with their GLOBE activities (e.g., collecting temperature, humidity, cloud cover and precipitation measurements from their weather station and entering their data into the GLOBE server).

While working with GLOBE, I have noticed the difficulties teachers face in getting their students to critically examine the data they collect and to ask and answer scientific questions using their data. There is a significant need for a curriculum unit focused on the scientific method that teachers can integrate with their GLOBE data collection. Currently, I am redesigning my proposed program in order to achieve this. This fall I will be testing and refining the curriculum unit in several middle school classes in Tucson. Eventually, my goal is to make the unit widely available so that any of the more than 10,000 GLOBE classrooms around the world would be able to use it.

Janice Lee, co-sponsored by the Department of Astronomy.

Through my training in science education and previous experience with students as a high school physics teacher, it has become clear to me that traditional American science curricula is the source of many misconceptions of how scientific progress is made and how research is performed. Frequently, laboratory "experiments" are merely exercises in following cookbook-style directions while assignments and lectures are overly focused on memorization, imitation and repetition. Students are rarely engaged in inquiry activities and are not afforded the opportunity to experience the thrill of discovery or the frustration associated with unmasking trends in data and the gradual construction of a framework for understanding observed phenomena. Traditional classroom science not only is inadequate for developing critical thinking skills, it also leaves students confused about how real-world research is conducted.

As a Space Grant Graduate Fellow, I have been provided with the opportunity to address these concerns while concurrently pursuing research in extra-galactic astronomy as a doctoral student at Steward Observatory.

Presently, I am working with the education department at the Flandrau Science Center to reorganize and improve their demonstration "modules," hour-long ready-to-implement hands-on science lessons. These modules, which include lesson outlines, worksheets and all the materials needed for the suggested activities, are an invaluable resource Tucson classroom teachers, who often do not have the time or supplies required to plan such lessons. Instructors can even request that a Flandrau "demonstrator" come to their classroom to teach the lesson or bring their classes to the Science Center to experience the module instead of implementing the module themselves. However, only four modules are currently available. To remedy this, we are working on creating new ready-to-use modules. In addition, we are also re-organizing the existing modules so that they more nearly approach the student-centered and inquiry-based ideal rather than reflecting the instructor-centered and lecture-based traditional model.

On a second front, I am also beginning a collaboration with the "Research-Based Science Education with the Hubble Space Telescope" (RBSE) project at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. This initiative involves the development of research-based curricula in which the acquisition and analysis of real astronomical data become the primary channel though which students learn science. I am presently investigating the feasibility of creating a off-site program in which advanced high-school students can become involved in long-term astrophysical research. This requires the identification of a target student population, local mentors, and appropriate research projects. Currently, many able students who are interested in research astronomy are funneled into other disciplines simply because of the greater availability to learn about and participate in projects in those fields. My objective is to encourage more students to pursue careers in astronomy and astrophysics by increasing number of early opportunities for involvement in research in these fields.

Fall 2001 Update

During the Spring of 2001, I completed my collaboration with the Flandrau Science Center in the development of "demonstration modules," hour-long ready to implement hands-on science lessons. We have designed a module that allows primary school students to explore the phenomenon of magnetism. In this module students are introduced to the concept of "force field" through discussion and activities that involve building compasses and mapping field lines of various types of magnets using iron filings and ferromagnetic fluid. In an experiment that involves building electromagnets, the students also discover that current carrying wires have magnetic properties. They learn about the variables that contribute to the strength of an electromagnetic field through a class competition that asks the student to build the strongest electromagnet possible using a given set of materials. Flandrau volunteers were trained to use the module, which includes a central lesson plan, worksheets, and lab materials, this past April. The module has been made available to TUSD teachers since mid-April. In addition, we have worked on modifying and updating other existing modules on the subjects of light and optics.

This past April, I also developed an inquiry-based galaxy classification activity. In this activity, students are asked to work in groups of three to four. After a short introduction to the various types of celestial bodies that an astronomer can observe in the night sky, each group receives a set of 25 galaxy cards consisting of mid-quality black-and-white images of galaxies of various morphological types. The groups are asked to invent a classification scheme to categorize the different types of galaxies and then are asked to compare and contrast their schemes. The students are then asked to think about the possible physical relationships between the objects. The activity was field tested at the Mansfield Elementary School as part of a week-long unit which introduced students to the importance of classification in science. The activity was also offered to participants in "Daughters' on Campus Day" as individual hour-long introductions to extragalactic astronomy. The activity was a success with children (and adults) of all age groups, and allowed the participants to truly explore and learn about crucial concepts of astronomy without the need for a prerequisite of a large base of prior knowledge. It was extremely satisfying to observe students as they reinvented Hubble's classification scheme and developed theories on galaxy mergers and effects of inclination on the appearance of disk galaxies. Currently, I, along with Suzanne Jacoby (NOAO), Connie Walker (NOAO) and Tim Slater (Steward), are writing a NASA IDEAS grant to request funding to develop, test and disseminate the activity on a nation-wide level. We are working to incorporate these central ideas concerning the extragalactic sky into the standard basic science middle school curriculum. This endeavor will involve the acquisition of color high-resolution galaxy images from existing archives, the design and mass-production of new galaxy cards, testing and evaluation on the district level, dissemination through the existing Project- Astro network and the National Science Teachers' Association, and presentations at conferences. We project that these goals will be completed on a two-year time scale.

Allison Kipple, co-sponsored by the University of Arizona Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

I became involved in outreach education as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado. It began innocently enough when I agreed to give tours of the aerospace facility where I worked. Some visiting teachers asked if I could help them beef up their space and technology units, and before I knew it I was completely immersed in outreach education - and loving it. In my last year as the volunteer outreach coordinator at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, I gave space-related presentations and workshops to several thousand pre-college students. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, but I needed help!

Engineering students are pretty busy people. A lot of them also despise public speaking, so I had a tough time recruiting other students to help give outreach presentations. I also didn't have enough time to give appropriate support to those who did volunteer. In those hectic times I sketched out one possible solution which the Arizona Space Grant program has now supported - to offer a class on outreach education specifically tailored to the needs of engineering students. The course credit (with probable GPA boost) and transcript listing (looks good in an interview) will provide a practical justification for taking the class, to boost the more altruistic reasons for doing so. Students will additionally acquire valuable public speaking skills, keeping on that track of simultaneously working toward career goals and helping the community. During the class we'll discuss a variety of topics including: keys to a successful outreach presentation, phases in children's mental development, state education standards, and kindergarten crowd control. Several guest speakers will be brought into the class to elucidate particular topics. Over the course of the semester students will develop, test (with the class), and implement their own outreach programs.

In Colorado, I knew some fantastic teachers and prospective visiting speakers who would help make the outreach course a success. My first goal in implementing the class here at the University of Arizona was to meet the people active in outreach education here. I've been thoroughly impressed with the quality and amount of outreach which folks at this university are supporting. Now I need to jump in with my contribution. While I'm sketching out the course outline for Fall 2000, I'm also developing a new outreach program for my host department, electrical engineering. It's going to be a fun one - I hope you'll see it soon!

January 2000 Update:

One of my major goals for this year was to identify local teachers and university affiliates who would help make the planned engineering outreach course a success - both in terms of providing forums for the engineering students' programs and as guest lecturers in the class. I've attended teacher workshops where I've not only met highly-motivated teachers but also practicing engineers who've offered time and resources for the engineering outreach program. Through SAMEC, I've met a number of energetic individuals who are working through various university programs to improve education in our community. I'm genuinely impressed by the number of people involved and the quality of their work, and I look forward to working with them.

I gave a briefing on our plans for an outreach course at one SAMEC meeting, and I was very surprised to learn that two other groups had similar plans. Gail Burd of Molecular Biology has been offering a course titled "Science Connection" to undergraduates who plan to enter teaching careers. I'll be reviewing her class this spring. The recently-funded CATTS program will also be offering a similar class this spring. I'm happy to say that a fellow engineering student (and friend) was awarded a CATTS fellowship, and we'll be discussing what aspects of that program would be beneficial to ours.

In the meantime, I've been developing a new outreach presentation which is better suited for my host department of electrical engineering (previous presentations were space-related). It will be done by the end of January, and I think it will be educational and fun! Some Girl Scout troops are ready for the presentation when I'm finished, and I'll advertise it in the March SAMEC newsletter as well.

In the Fall 2000 semester, I took some science education courses (see http://samec.lpl.arizona.edu/) in the hope of improving my outreach activities, and now I'm actually doing a PhD project in the field of science education. I have found the field of science education to be very interesting, and I have found education outreach to be highly rewarding. I hope that this fellowship will encourage more of you to become involved in these activities!

Carmala Garzione, co-sponsored by The Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE):

I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geosciences. For my dissertation, I am studying the timing and mechanisms of uplift of the southern Tibetan Plateau by examination of the sedimentary fill of N-trending basins on the southern plateau. These grabens are believed to have formed as a result of gravitational collapse of the plateau following crustal thickening and uplift to its current elevation. Changes in south Asian climate as well as global climate have been attributed to uplift of the Himalaya and Tibetan plateau. Understanding the timing of uplift of this vast elevated region is critical to assessing the affect of the growth of large mountain belts on global climate.

Through my own research, I have become increasingly aware of the public's lack of understanding of the causes and effects of climate change. While climate change regularly appears in science news, the public's poor understanding of the scientific process not only makes it difficult to understand the causes of climate change, but impossible to critically evaluate arguments for or against a proposed cause. Because science-based issues frequently receive public vote, such as the use of C.A.P. water in Tucson, it is essential to increases the public's scientific literacy to develop the public's understanding of both global and community issues related to science.

In fall of 1999, I began an outreach program through Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) geared towards increasing scientific literacy among teachers, with an emphasis on Earth Science education. The goal of the program is to give teachers an understanding of the basic content of Earth Science and the scientific process so that teachers can better guide their students to participate in the scientific process. Through the DESERT Project () TUSD is currently restructuring science education at the K-8 level by incorporating more interactive and inquiry-based learning into the curriculum. My interest in working with teachers fits well within the TUSD plan because it is through the teachers that new curriculum is being introduced.

In the fall, I became familiar with the workings of the DESERT Project by participating in various functions of the program. I attended a learning forum with Middle school science teachers aimed at developing inquiry in the classroom, fostering group interaction, attaining closure, and assessing students' understanding of scientific concepts. I also participated in a teacher workshop aimed at introducing teachers to a "Models and Designs" science kit that they used in their classrooms last fall. On a weekly basis, I meet and interact with collaborative teachers (CTs), those that deliver the new curriculum and teaching techniques to teachers.

Last fall I developed a "Geology an Earth Science Through Inquiry" course for 5th through 8th grade teachers that I will teach over a 6 week period in late January and February. This class is designed to reinforce the teachers' understanding of the earth science content they are expected to teach in their classrooms as well as introduce techniques by which they can teach through inquiry. I will also run workshops on "teaching the scientific process" at several TUSD teacher conferences. Later in the Spring semester, I will work with several teachers in their classrooms as a general science liaison to the class.

Ross Beyer, co-sponsored by the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

My advisor Alfred McEwen, and I are involved with the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. We work with high-resolution images of the Martian surface trying to understand the history of flood lavas on the surface and the nature of layering in the Valles Marineris Canyon system. I'm also involved with using MOC images to help plan future landing sites for missions like the2003 Mars Exploration Rovers.

I have worked with Jay Melosh to put some crater computation algorithms on the web. We have created a web site that will compute the crater size made by a given impactor and impact conditions, as well as the reverse problem of computing the projectile size given the crater diameter. This web site has been very useful for many people around the Planetary Sciences Department and was mentioned in the February 2000 issue of Astronomy Magazine.

Additionally I have taught a class on how to write HTML for beginners, a few times. Additionally, Susan Brew and I have been working on redesigning and streamlining the UA Spacegrant web pages, what you see is a result of our work, we hope you like it.

In the future, Laszlo Keszthelyi and I will be assembling a web site that will contain images of terrestrial lava flows from in the field, aerial photography, and spacecraft imagery. These images will be compared to images of features on planets like Mars and Io that we believe are volcanic in origin. It will allow comparisons to be made on many scales and should be very interesting. Additionally, I am looking forward to giving some public lectures on the MOC/MGS mission.

Jonathan Alberding, co-sponsored by the University of Arizona Department of Physics.

During the last semester of my outreach program(s), Program ACCESS and the Student Satellite Project achieved the following landmarks. Program ACCESS achieved a successful first summer camp, which was covered in The Arizona Daily Star. Differentially Abled Middle School students were introduced to disciplines such as the Mathematics of music, the Physics behind Star Wars, and the researching of dinosaurs on the World Wide Web. The students also learned the physiology of arteries and veins, visited a clean room, and used bananas frozen in liquid nitrogen to drive nails through boards. In addition, Program ACCESS provided 6-7 local high school teachers with enrichment grants, one of which helped fund a wetlands project at Palo Verde High School that was featured on local news reports. Program ACCESS funded an additional three enrichment grants this year.

The Student Satellite Project successfully recruited a new Systems Engineering Mentor, Dr. Terry Bahill, and recently recruited its second Systems Engineer, Christiano Abadi, SIE graduate student with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Christiano's background will complement the SSP administration nicely. A Systems Engineering plan was decided upon, with the three main goals to be; one, defining interfaces between teams. Two, creation of a design database for ease of monitoring the overall satellite design, and three, budgeting of necessary resources such as mass, power, and volume. SSP was also included in a UNESS proposal to NASA, which, if successful, would help ensure financial solubility for the project. If the proposal is successful, a sea change in SSP will occur, with SSP's current projects moving to another platform (most likely the International Space Station). The current satellite design will then be modified to perform a radio occultation experiment to measure amounts of water vapor in the stratosphere. This experiment will be performed with Principal Investigator Dr. Ben Herman of the Atmospheric Sciences department of the University of Arizona and under the tutelage of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. SSP also is completing an update of its website,http://uasat.arizona.edu. Features include new information about events in the project, updated links, new student distribution and organization charts, and soon new documentation and archival sections. Many team websites have also been updated. SSP's next project is to have a pre-review this semester, and use this opportunity to begin to prepare for a Preliminary Design Review (PDR), one of the first milestones on the path to launching the actual satellite.

The Student Satellite Project has been hard at work attempting to prepare for a Preliminary Design Review (PDR), where the students essentially show that their main design parameters will meet their design requirements. This is the next phase in the satellite design process. The PDR, if successful, will give SSP, in addition to the main idea of giving students real-life experience, a basic design with which to approach potential sponsors and benefactors. SSP hopes to perform its PDR in the Spring of 2001. Program ACCESS continues to perform its summer camp and laboratory design review, in addition to its other responsibilities. Thanks to savings within the program, a fourth year of ACCESS looks to be possible.

Maggie Turnbull has been awarded a two-year Space Grant Fellowship, co-sponsored by The University of Arizona's Department of Astronomy.

My primary motivation for choosing a career in astronomy is that although reason and instinct tell me there must be endless forms of life in the Universe, no one has actually proven the existence of life anywhere outside of the planet Earth. I also strongly believe that understanding the nature of life in the Universe will ultimately serve to uplift the health and harmony of human society. Lucky for me, the Arizona Space Grant Graduate Fellowship program makes it possible for graduate students to reach out to people of all ages and share what I'm learning at one of the most respected institutions for astronomy in the world.

In order to get in touch with some of the youngs minds in the neighborhood I have recently begun working with Stephen Patrick at Pistor Middle School through Tucson's Project ASTRO. The purpose of the program is to team professional scientists with enthusiastic teachers in bringing real scientific experiences to kids. I plan to visit Stephen's class twice a month and take part in activities ranging from hands-on lab projects, special lessons on my favorite astronomy topics, star gazing, and (historically accurate) storytelling. More than anything my hope is stir up and analyze ideas and create a non-threatening atmosphere where all questions are good questions.

The second part of my outreach objective involves reaching out to the adults in the community by setting up an series of informal no-prerequisite presentations on anything from stellar evolution to the marriage of science and religion. Depending on the topic, these gatherings could take place around a campfire while roasting marshmallows or in the classroom while watching NASA videos on space probes. Again, the goal is to encourage free and imaginative thinking supported by solid scientific reasoning. I hope to involve other scientists at the University of Arizona and set up one such series of meetings by next semester.

Summary of outreach for 1999-2000:

After last year's experience with Project ASTRO, I decided to use the feedback I got from students and take this year to improve several outreach presentations I've had in the works for a while. I chose three topics that seem to be of interest to students and fall within my range of knowledge:

• The search for extraterrestrial intelligence
• Planets detection
• Stars and their evolution

In general, teachers have been very happy just to have me come and talk to the class, but I have found that it takes more than talking to really keep a group of students engaged. For instance, in order to start understanding how something works, students need to see it for themselves and participate in the discovery process. With that in mind, I took my basic presentations and added:

• more revealing pictures and several movies (For instance the SOHO satellite team made a movie of the Sun, fading from optical wavelengths to ultraviolet to xrays. This helps students understand how light comes in many colors beyond what we see, and how different the universe looks in different "colors.").
• real-life familiar examples and demonstrations (using car horns to demonstrate the doppler shift and rainbows to start a discussion about the spectrum and kick off a lesson on planet detection)
• thinking assignments that don't involve any memorizing, but are based on the context of their own lives. What if we recieved a signal from another civilization? What are all the things we would need in order to survive on another planet? Can you invent a creature that might be able to survive on Mars? Jupiter?

Things help bring the material into a familiar or fun context. I tried them out in six classrooms of chemistry and physics students, and while the students were certainly interested, I still felt they weren't claiming what they were learning as "theirs." In order to participate in the discovery process, students need to stop being told about stuff and start finding things out for themselves. When I researched this concept a little more I discovered that the latest catch-phrase in science education is "inquiry-based learning," and that there are several groups here at the U of A trying to improve the science curriculum of local schools using this concept. At the end of last semester I introduced myself to Gail Burd, a professor in microbiology, who runs the "Science Connection."

Science Connection is a program that invites teachers to request a science connector to visit their classroom regularly--not to tell the students how things work, but to bring activities so the students can decide for themselves how things work. The goal of inquiry-based teaching is not to bring a lab with predetermined instructions, but to provide students with the materials they need to answer a question. Students can go as far as they wish with the activity, and they are encouraged to ask and answer questions of their own. I will start working with Gail this spring in a variety of capacities, including creating astronomy and physics activities, helping undergrads be better "connectors," being a connector myself, and evaluating the inquiry-based merit of science activities currently used by the Tucson School District.

Keirith Snyder was awarded a one-year Space Grant Fellowship, co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE).

Keirith described here Space Grant outreach project as follows:
I am currently working on A Ph.D. in Renewable Natural Resource. My investigations focus on the water-use relations of tree species and the link between hydrology and vegetation. Currently I work in riparian ecosystems on the upper San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. My outreach program targets high school students in an outreach effort to increase their understanding hydrologic cycles, watershed processes, and to learn how multidisciplinary research is being done.

As a teaching assistant and as a student, I have seen the positive experience that field trips and exposure to on-going projects has on student interest and class participation. Therefore, I have established an interactive science field trip for students to a cooperative research project on the San Pedro River.

Resident of Arizona live in Semi-arid systems and find themselves facing many environmental issues related to the management of these systems and precious water resources. Multiple-use conflict over water allocation and groundwater pumping are constantly in the public eye. There is also increasing concern with protecting the fragile riparian gallery forests that provide structurally diverse vegetation for wildlife. My outreach program focuses on understanding how scientific information is collected about these systems in order to elucidate how management and global change may affect the productivity and sustainabilityof these ecosystems. This outreach program will target understanding the hydrologic cycle, basin water budget, and ecology of plant communities within riparian ecosystems.

The field trip site (Lewis Springs) is a semi-arid riparian ecosystem along the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona and is part of the Semi-Arid Land Surface-Atmosphere Program (SALSA). SALSA is an interdisciplinary science program created by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (Tucson, AZ) involving 40 scientists. The objective is to investigate the natural and human induced impacts on the basin-wide water balance and ecological processes of the Upper San Pedro River Basin.

My outreach program begins with an informal discussion on site, where students are exposed to the hydrologic cycle, issues surrounding water management, and possible scenarios of global climate change. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how scientific progress is made (i.e. using the scientific method and observations to determine process). Aerial and remotely sensed imagery of the area are shown and the objectives of the SALSA project are explained. The next few stops emphasize hands on involvement where students use instruments to measure the climate, stream flow, soil conditions, and groundwater levels. This experience is to provide with them with a enhanced understanding of the components of the hydrologic cycle, by actually measuring them.

The next segment of the field trip at the Lewis Springs site is a hands-on involvement with the vegetation component of riparian ecosystems. Students will become familiar with the unique vegetation of these areas in contrast with the surrounding upland areas. Then species in different habitats are selected by the students to measure leaf water potential to determine which plants have to tolerate lower levels of water availability.

To finish up the day students walk to the top of hill to view the surrounding basin and discuss the possible impacts of different types of land use will have on the hydrology and of the watershed and the riparian ecosystem. In this basin, stark differences in land uses (e.g. grazing, agriculture) are visible in the aboveground imagery, and will be integrated into the discussion. Students will hopefully take back an increased understanding of the hydrologic cycle, components of the basin water balance, and an idea of how scientists measure these variables, and how these variables affect plant communities.

Visiting this site provides students with an interactive learning experience at an operational research site. This project incorporates many scientists of different disciplines and will provide students with a multi-faceted exposure to global change research and basin-scale watershed management. To assess the effectiveness of this outreach program the teachers pass out a short writing assignments asking students what they learned, and how they see the role of science in managing natural resources. I also ask for teacher feedback on the program, so I can incorporate changes into the curriculum as needed.

Jason Rech was awarded a two-year Space Grant Fellowship, co-sponsored by the University of Arizona Department of Geosciences.

Jason Reports:

In 1997 NASA captured the imagination of the American public and the world with its discovery of "life" on Mars and with the amazing images of the surface of Mars. The announcement by NASA in March of 1997 of 'evidence of life on Mars' let many Americans think about the possibilities of life on other planets. The news motivated President Bill Clinton to announce the need for increased research of Mars and other planets in our solar system. In July of 1997 NASA presented Americans with spectacular images of the surface of Mars taken by the Imager for the Mars Pathfinder camera (IMP), built at The University of Arizona. These events placed the American space program back in the minds of American children and created an ideal environment for teaching science.

My own area of scientific study is in arid geomorpholgy, soil geochemistry, and geoarchaeology. I have conducted paleoenvironmental and geoarchaeological research in the semi-arid region of Israel (1992-1996), the Gobi Desert of Mongolia (1996-1997) and most recently in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.

The scientific outreach program that I am working on introduces science and the scientific method by focusing on the study of Mars and the use of arid environments on Earth to gain a better understanding of Mars. I am also using studies of arid environments to document global change on earth and discuss implications of anthropogenic effects on the environment. The program targets freshman and sophomore high school students in Tucson and surrounding areas and has two phases. The first phase of the program is to present a series of lectures to freshman and sophomore general science classes. This audience is composed of students who have mixed feelings towards science and different levels of understanding about the scientific method, since all high school students are required to complete these courses. The second phase of the program targets highly motivated students from these general science courses. Small groups of students are brought to the University of Arizona to participate in small laboratory exercises, and then taken out into the desert to get 'hands on' experience.

Fall 99 Update:

During the Fall semester, 1999, I feel that I made good progress with my NASA space-grant. Last year my outreach program was hindered by the difficulty in communicating with teachers and the problems with taking students out of the classroom. Despite a front-page add in the AMES newsletter, and brochures advertising my talks, few teachers contacted me. Last semester I developed ties with the Cooper Environmental Science Center (CESC) to hopefully overcome some of these difficulties.

CESC is an environmental camp, located in the Tucson Mountains, where mostly 4th graders go for either half-day or overnight field trips. This circumvents the problem of getting the children out into the field. To advertise my talks the staff at CESC mails my flyers out to teachers using CESC this year both at the beginning of the year and about a month before they come. Besides giving talks I am also preparing a geology field excursion that will be used even after my space-grant ends. I feel that CESC is presents many opportunities for space-grant fellows and that future space-grant fellows should utilize this facility if it fits within their outreach objectives.