The Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) and the CalSpace Center for Origins Studies (COS) will sponsor a teacher’s workshop in Summer 2002. The theme will be "Scientific Ballooning" and will bring up to 20 teachers to the UC Santa Cruz Campus for 2-5 week sessions to prepare a science curriculum centered on data and observations from scientific balloon flights.

Where: UC Santa Cruz Campus
When: July 8 to 19, 2002
Who: Middle and High School Teachers
Stipend: $750 (up to $700/week if additional funding will be available)
Travel: Some funds for travel are available
Credit: Academic credit will be available on request
Deadlines: Application March 15, acceptance April 1, 2002

The highlights of the 2002 program will be:

Class Room Analysis of the 2001 GLAST Balloon Flight
Learn about Space Sciences and Particle Physics
Devise small balloon launches for in-class use
Fly payloads with CORAX — tentative-
Construct payload as a piggy-back for NSBF Science Flights
Induction of teachers into research related topics and their class room use
Develop class room material and demonstrations based on ballooning
Organize a Balloon Fest in the Fall of 2002

During the summer program, teachers will learn the science and techniques of balloon flights and will made familiar with building small balloon instruments and fly them. In addition they will attend lectures about Astrophysics and Particle physics, and will be introduced to applications of modern science instrumentation in other fields. They will be expected to apply in the fall the acquired skills in their own classrooms. We will organize a "Balloon Fest" in the fall to have students accompany their teachers for flying their own balloons.

An exiting part of this program is the opportunities provided by the National Science Balloon Facility in Palestine, TX. We have made contact with NSBF personnel and have been assured that they would facilitate having high school payloads fly piggyback on scientific balloon flights.

The idea for this program grew out of the GLAST LAT Balloon flight in 2001, which was attended by 5 H.S. Teachers (http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/BALLOON ). We have now a core of teachers (see below), who regularly visit or e-mail us and have demonstrated interest in having their students attracted to science and be motivated to seek a career in a technical or scientific field. We believe that this program will increase the number of students going into technical fields significantly, given that their teachers will both be well prepared and excited about teaching science.

We will limit the program to local schools (K-12) to allow the participants to commute to UCSC campus every day. We will also establish contacts, which will be nurtured the year round contact (see below for our year round program). This enables the students to visit us in the laboratories and/or approach us with questions about Science Fair projects etc. Local for us mean about 3 hrs commute distance (i.e. Sacramento and Paso Robles).

The workshop will have the following structure: in the first 3 weeks, a core of 4-5 "veteran" teachers (see below for preliminary roster) will prepare the experiments for the ballooning workshop, which will take place in the following 2 weeks. At that time, they will be joined by up to 15 additional "novice" teachers (with preference for middle school teachers) for induction. The program will be supported by lectures and seminars by the Physics/Astrophysics faculty at UCSC. We will involve science educators of the UCSC Education Department in the development of classroom activities. An important aspect is the inclusion of undergraduate and graduate students as teaching assistants in the teachers program, in order to attract qualified students into the teaching profession.

A stipend of $750 (up to $1,400 if additional funding can be found) will be paid to the participants, and limited travel funds are available. Teachers are encouraged to apply for funding for stipend, travel and equipment from their school districts. Academic credit will be available.

Ballooning 2002 Program
Preliminary

Planning meeting April 19/20 in Dixon, CA - Core teachers + SCIPP
June 17 — July 5: 3 weeks Workshop Preparation - 5 core teachers at UCSC
- Lessons from the 2001 GLAST Balloon Flight
- Simple low altitude balloon experiments
- CORAX prototype —tentative-
- High altitude payload experiments for NSBF
July 8 — July 19: 2 weeks Ballooning Workshop - 15 additional teachers
- Introduction into ballooning
- Hands-on experience with balloon experiments
- Data analysis
- Development of classroom material (lessons, assignments, demos)
- Lectures by UCSC faculty and researchers
Balloon Fest in Fall 2002 in Dixon, CS
- Teachers (and their students) compete in balloon flights
Launch winning entries as payload at NSBF.

Click Here for the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations

Roster of Core H.S. Teachers Preparing the 2002 Balloon Workshop
(Preliminary)

Mr. Stuart Briber - Independence H.S., San Jose
Dr. James Dann - St. Ignatius H.S., San Francisco
Mr. Jim Dann - Natomas H.S., Sacramento
Mr. Steve Kliewer - Paso Robles H.S., Paso Robles
Mr. Joe Manildi - Watsonville H.S., Watsonville

Year round SCIPP Outreach Program
Visits to 10 local high schools or H.S. programs to present a Tesla coil demonstration and talk about the science program at the Univ. of California. Total attendance: more than 4,000 students. http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/teslacoil