By LEXI ALLEN
Utah valley high school students are teaming up with NASA scientists to analyze images taken by spacecraft orbiting Mars, and the students’ computer-generated materials will help ensure the continued success and safety of the landed NASA Spirit rover.
A group of 21 multimedia students at the Mountainland Applied Technology College in Orem earned a spot as one of NASA’s Mars Exploration Student Data Teams. As the only team that is not a math or science program, The MATC Mars team has been creating 3-D models and animations of the two Mars space probes and producing visual materials for Mars scientists to use in their continued research efforts.
The team’s projects will help scientists monitor topographic and atmospheric elements that could affect the Mars rover missions. Only 53 other student teams from across the country were awarded this opportunity.
David Black, the instructor of the MATC’s multimedia classes and coordinator of the MATC’s Mars Exploration Student Data Team, has directed teacher workshops for NASA for the last three years. Black said his students’ involvement in this project gives them an opportunity they couldn’t get anywhere else.
“I’m always looking for projects for them that are the kind of caliber that would be professional,” Black said. “It’s always kind of a challenge to find something that’s difficult enough and realistic enough that they’d really learn professional skills. Just think of what this will mean for them — the fact that they not only participated in a mission with NASA, as most students have never had the chance to do before, but that they’re going to create a professional quality project at the end.”
Black’s students have the potential to impact audiences across the country with their Mars work, he said, and this creates valuable career opportunities for them as well.
“It will be distributed, perhaps, to schools all over the country,” Black said. “Their work is something that is going to be used by a lot of people. Just think what they could put in a portfolio or resume that will help them go out and find jobs in this field. They’ve already done stuff beyond what most people will ever get a chance to do.”
The MATC Mars team comprises two of Black’s multimedia classes, he said. A beginning class of 15 students works as a support team and mainly focuses on the images sent from the probes orbiting Mars and on the team’s final project. The Mars project will help this beginning class learn how to use the required computer software, Black said.
Black’s advanced multimedia class of six students is doing the majority of the project’s work, he said, calling them the MATC Mars team’s lead students.
“It’s a small group but they’re very, very talented,” Black said. “We’ve already got them building 3-D models and animations of these probes that are looking pretty good.”
The Mars project also demonstrates the dedication of the MATC faculty, said Chad Erickson, the college’s director of marketing.
“David Black would never admit it, but I’m guessing he spends a couple hours outside of school every night on this program,” Erickson said.
The prominence of the Mars project also demonstrates the value of alternative high school education options like the vocational training offered at the MATC, Black said. Students from high schools throughout Utah Valley attend the MATC part time to receive additional vocational training and certification at the same time that they work to earn their high school diplomas.
“For the school, this has been a great benefit because it allows us to show that we really are pulling in a lot of different areas, with vocational training and so-on, that normal high schools just can’t do,” Black said.
Projects like this one also increase the MATC’s student enrollment, Erickson said.
“As we try to recruit new students to attend the college, this lets them know that the hands-on training goes far beyond what they ever thought it could,” Erickson said. “When they start to consider that they are involved in a project of this magnitude that has historically been reserved for your scientists or your graduate students for the premiere universities in the world, and here we are at Mountainland Applied Technology College. Our students are now a huge part of that. I think it helps the students to increase their vision of what is available to them, not only in education but in a career path.”
Adult students have heard of the project and contacted the college to volunteer their time out of a love for NASA and the pursuit of scientific truth, Erickson said.
“They just want to be involved in this program,” he said.
