NC Space Grant | Higher Education Programs

The NC Space Grant Higher Education Course Development Programs are designed to enhance the organization's capability to expand access to higher education programs that are based upon NASA’s priorities. The primary focus of this program is the development of interdisciplinary and distance learning courses.


	Earth Remote Sensing Interdisciplinary Course Development for Videoconference Presentation PI: Dr. Malcolm LeCompte - Elizabeth City State University Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) The objective of this work is to develop an interdisciplinary remote sensing course with content suitable for upper division undergraduate or early graduate students. Content will include basic physical concepts necessary for students to achieve a deeper understanding of the remote sensing field. The course will be tailored to the needs and academic background of students majoring in the physical and life sciences, mathematics, and computer science and will require a basic level of mathematics including a complete 3 semester calculus sequence. Physical principles would be presented with no more preparation necessary than that provided by a university-level introductory physics course. Course development work will yield an exportable lesson plan, notes and power point slides, example problems with detailed explanations, and problem sets with associated solutions and explanations. The course will be offered and taught remotely by ECSU faculty, as a video-tele-course initially to member institutions in the Center for remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) consortium; however, we anticipate the course will ultimately have wider dissemination."

	A Capstone Course in Applied Computational Problem Solving PI: Dr. Garrett Love - North Carolina Central University Modern science problems, such as those often found in the domain of NASA, tend to be increasingly complex as scientists pursue greater predictive accuracy through the use of advanced mathematics and/or large volumes of measured physical data. Applied Computational Problem Solving will be a senior-level capstone course for a new Bachelor’s Degree in Computational Science at NCCU, and is being designed to give students in the degree program direct experience in applying the methods of advanced computing to such complex practical problems as manned space exploration and global environmental monitoring.

	Development of Drop Tower Facility for Space Systems Senior Design Course PI: Dr. Andre Mazzoleni - North Carolina State Univeristy The Aerospace Engineering program at NC State requires all students to take a two-semester course in aerospace systems design. To ensure that there is a variety of interesting projects for students to select from, we plan to develop a drop tower facility that students can use to test future projects in a reduced gravity environment. Typical phenomena that are interesting to examine in a reduced gravity environment are fluid flow and combustion effects.

	Establishing a Microgravity Research Course at UNC-Pembroke PI: Dr. Tim Ritter - Univeristy of North Carolina at Pembroke Over the past five years The University of North Carolina at Pembroke and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte have annually joined together to form a team of undergraduate students to participate in NASA’s highly competitive Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. Each year the team members spend a great deal of time on their project, which goes from idea to final report writing in approximately ten months. In the past the students have done all of this in their spare time and without academic credit for their endeavors. This grant will fund the development of two microgravity research courses and the research projects associated with them.

	Terrestrial Internet to Cosmic Internet: Issues and Design PI: Dr. Ravanasamudra Uma - North Carolina Central University This new course discusses the issues and design of the InterPlaNetary Internet, a NASA endeavor to extend the Internet to outer space. Due to the differences in communication characteristics, traditional communication protocols cannot be applied and therefore, the concept of delay-tolerant networks was introduced by NASA scientists (including others). This course is divided into three phases: (1) student-led teams will discuss the problems in applying existing protocols and propose possible solutions; (2) students will formally learn the concept of delay-tolerant networks and solutions proposed in research literature; (3) students will evaluate solutions discussed in phase two on a simulated environment.

	Higher Education Course Development Program Request for Proposals The Higher Education Course Development Program is designed to provide funding to initiate interdisciplinary and/or distance learning courses. These courses will be focused on equipping the future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce to gain a better understanding of complex aero/space issues. Proposals Due: Feb-March 2008

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