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Project Descriptions

NASA Saturday in the Pee Dee

January 8, 2014 - January 7, 2017 | Media and Technology, Public Programs
The NASA Saturday in the Pee Dee, an underserved region of South Carolina, is a three year project led by ScienceSouth, partnering with The Dooley Planetarium at Francis Marion University, to deliver hands on programming, astronomical viewing sessions, and planetarium programs to increase public awareness of NASA and its on-going missions, and to generate an interest in the areas of STEM education and the pursuit of careers in these fields. The audience is the residents in a ten-county region of South Carolina known as the Pee Dee, with Florence, South Carolina as the economic hub of the region. The Pee Dee has a very high percentage of minority residents, people living at or below the poverty level, and poor performance on standardized test especially in the STEM related topics. There will be a total of ten hands-on programs directly related to on-going NASA missions, including astrobiology, near earth objects, robotics, rocketry, geocaching, deep space, weather systems on Earth, the sun and distant stars, telescopes, and planetary objects. These programs will be held at the ScienceSouth Pavilion or Dooley Planetarium. The programs will be complemented initially with eight observation sessions the first year, with the number expanding in the following years to include more rural areas in the Pee Dee. The Florence County Library system and Florence School District One have agreed to assist in increasing public awareness of programs and provide additional resources for further information about related topics.

Funders

NASA
Award Number: NNX14AD05G
Funding Amount: 780275

TEAM MEMBERS

  • Stephen Welch
    Principal Investigator
    ScienceSouth
  • Jeannette Myers
    Co-Principal Investigator
    Francis Marion University
  • Nathan Flowers
    Co-Principal Investigator
    Francis Marion University
  • Anthony Martinez
    Contact
    ScienceSouth
  • Discipline: Engineering | Geoscience and geography | Space science
    Audience: General Public | Museum/ISE Professionals
    Environment Type: Media and Technology | Planetarium and Science on a Sphere | Public Programs | Community Outreach Programs
    Access and Inclusion: Rural

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