Jerry Lindfelt, Vice President for Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems, ISR Systems, recently presented the Challenger Space Center with a check for $3,000 to be used for classroom scholarships and to help sponsor the Challenger Center’s celebration of National Space Day, which is May 7, 2003. Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems is located in Litchfield Park.
With this most recent gift, Lockheed Martin has donated close to $10,000 to the Challenger Center since the Center opened in July of 2000. In addition to underwriting mission scholarships, Lockheed Martin’s Litchfield Park facility has also donated computers, equipment, and exhibit displays to the Challenger Center.
The primary mission of the Challenger Space Center is to improve education in the areas of math, science, technology, and workplace skills for teachers and students. The Challenger Center provides three space mission scenarios for fifth through eighth grades: Rendezvous With a Comet, Voyage to Mars, and Return to the Moon. In addition, the Center offers highly acclaimed field trips for preschool through twelfth grade, including Space Place for Tots and To Be An Astronaut.
The Center is carrying on with the educational mission of America’s first teacher in space, Christa Corrigan McAuliffe, by providing a space-based learning environment where students fly simulated missions involving space ship flight crews, mission controllers, and scientists. An unforgettable two-and-a-half-hour mission is preceded by teacher training and four to six weeks of classroom curriculum that integrates math, science, technology and communications. A classroom mission scholarship, valued at $700, consists of a full day of teacher training, with the teacher receiving the four to six weeks of curriculum (aligned with Arizona State Standards), to implement in their classrooms. The students then come out the Center for their two-and-a-half-hour culminating experience – an exciting simulated space flight.
During the last year, the Challenger Space Center was voted Best Science Lesson by the Arizona Republic; named a West Valley Treasure; received Best of the West recognition and achievement from WESTMARC for the Smithsonian Institution Education Conference (bringing Smithsonian scholars to work with Arizona educators); and received national recognition for flying the most simulated space missions for both students and the public. This spring the Challenger Center will launch a distance learning program taking Earth sciences into fifth through eighth grade classrooms with E-Mission: Operation Montserrat. The program was funded through a grant from the Marley Foundation.
