Congratulations to NCESSE!
During my time at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) I had the pleasure of meeting and working with many extremely bright and interesting people. One of those people was Dr. Jeff Goldstein, who was the Center Director for the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), which at that time was under the umbrella of USRA. I have met few people that come close to having the same levels of passion, enthusiasm and optimism that Jeff has.
Shortly after I made my decision to leave USRA and pursue starting my own business, a decision was made to drop funding for NCESSE. Not one to just give up, Jeff poured all of his efforts into turning NCESSE into an independant non-profit and the future is looking bright for this wonderful organization.
Not wanting to see all of the effort that was put into NCESSE‘s programs go to waste, and understanding what it feels like to spin up a business, I felt compelled to help out in any way that I could. My company, Decisive IT, Inc., provides NCESSE with web/email hosting , web site maintenance and general IT advice/support free of charge.
NCESSE has two main programs, the Voyage National Program and Journey Through the Universe. The Voyage program provides communities world-wide the ability to permanently install a replica of the Voyage scale model solar system on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Journey is an educational program for entire communities – thousands of students, teachers, families and the public, meant to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. The Voyage model solar system can also be used as the center-piece for community-wide Journey through the Universe programming. NCESSE also has other programs, such as Family Science Nights at the National Air and Space Museum in DC, if you live in the DC area and have school-age kids I highly recommend checking this out if you get the chance.
Late last year, NCESSE reached a major milestone by completing the installation of two Voyage exhibitions, the first in Kansas City, MO, the second at Space Center Houston, the official visitor’s center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. There are more communities getting ready to put in their own Voyage exhibits in the near future, including, Corpus Christi, TX, Des Moines, IA, Orlando, FL and Baltimore, MD.
Congratulations to NCESSE on reaching those milestones and best wishes for even more success in 2009!
For more information about NCESSE and it’s programs, you can check out the links below:
Dr. Jeff’s Blog on the Universe
Dr. Jeff Goldstein’s LinkedIn profile
Jeffrey Bennett’s page about Voyage
A video of Dr. Goldstein presenting about the Kansas City Voyage Exhibition
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