MNA is very proud to evaluate the 5-year NASA’s Student Airborne Science Activation, or “SaSa,” (in Kiswahili meaning, Now) program.
SaSa is on a mission to broaden the ethnic and racial diversity of researchers in the Earth/Geosciences. To achieve this goal, SaSa will train up to 25 undergraduate applicants each year (freshmen and sophomores) who will be competitively selected from six Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) including: Coppin State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morgan State University, University of Maryland (Baltimore County), and University of Maryland (Eastern Shore) to participate in an intensive, residential, 8-week summer internship to forward NASA’s airborne campaign and research efforts in promoting atmospheric sciences.
SaSa’s goals are:
- To create a student geoscience learning ecosystem to enable effective student engagement with NASA scientists & engineers, academic advisors, peers, and the local communities.
- To provide students with new skills to work with NASA science equipment and real data from field/airborne campaigns and satellites.
- Provide students with problem solving skills in the areas of instrument development, operation and mathematical tools, and methods to analyze field data.
- Provide research, mentoring, and networking opportunities for early-career undergraduates to address the shortage of individuals from historically underrepresented groups graduating with STEM degrees from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and a need to prepare these students to enter STEM graduate programs as well as the NASA and research workforce.
Students and mentors will gain hands-on research experience in all components of a scientific research campaign, including flying onboard the NASA P-3 research aircraft to collect land, ocean, and atmospheric measurements.
More information about the program can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/sasa
Here’s a cool video to learn more about the program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRIA_C-l2c
