Space center allocated two Walton endowed professorships

The Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences has been allocated two endowed faculty positions, both in remote sensing of planetary surfaces, as part of the 50 new endowments created by the historic $300 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation.  One Walton Endowed Professorship is at $1.5 million and the other is at $0.5 million.  The space center now has the challenge of raising funds to match the Walton gift and with help from the University and College Development Officer will soon be approaching possible donors.  Chair holders will be named or hired once endowments are secured.

Through the generosity of the Walton Family Foundation, the space center has been able to award its first Walton Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship to Henry Turner.  Henry will receive an annual stipend of $30,000/year to study for a Ph.D. in Space and Planetary Sciences.  His tuition and benefits are also paid.  Pamela Jansma in geosciences is his mentor. 

The space center fellowships are available to Ph.D. candidates in one of the participating departments, who wish to study in a research topic within the space and planetary sciences, and who have superior academic credentials.

Henry will complete his master’s degree in geosciences this summer.  His current research uses GPS geodesy to investigate active tectonics of the Nicaraguan forearc.  His team is using observations from a network of campaign geodetic monuments located in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras to calculate surface velocities from the change in the positions of the monuments.  This tells them how the Earth’s crust is moving in response to tectonic stresses.  His Ph.D. project will include using the observed surface velocity field to model the subduction zone interface and strike-slip faults within the forearc.

Faculty in the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for space and Planetary Sciences are involved in science education beyond our intensive work with graduate students and the NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program. 

The "turning point" for many students arrives in their earlier education, particularly grades 5–8, the grades when a key teacher or experience first sparks an interest in science in young students.  When did you first become interested in science?  Recognizing the need to develop intrinsic motivation and critical thinking tools among today’s young scientists, the U.S. Department of Education has sponsored the Star Schools Program since 1968, a professional development program for teachers that produces a world-wide syllabus of multi-media applications, including semester courses, instructional modules, special topic video teleconferences, electronic field trips, and access to online resources. 

OSU is in Year 4 of a five-year, $5 million grant from the Star Schools Program to produce a web site for teachers in grades 5–8, a web site with resources to teach hypothesis-based learning (HBL) in science.  The OSU HBL project is an interactive website (http://waves.okstate.edu) with experiments that integrate physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. The experiments explicitly address the National Science Education Standards, which include basic understanding about the solar system. All experiments rely on materials that are easy and inexpensive to acquire. 

Although many of the experiments currently posted contain material pertinent to space and planetary sciences, one of special interest to those reading this newsletter is the experiment titled "Impact Craters."  Like all experiments, this one starts with a discrepant event, which is dropping objects (e.g., ball bearing or marble) into a tray of flour or sand.  Students are expected to record observations, develop hypotheses, conduct experiments to test their hypotheses, and finally, formulate conclusions.  In "Impact Craters," students typically find that crater dimensions and distance traveled by ejecta depend on the kinetic energy of the falling object.  Students typically struggle with controlling for all but one variable at a time, necessary to separate the relative effects of mass and velocity.  The HBL experiments are de-signed to take three 1-hour class periods. 

The HBL pedagogy, more than any other style, gives students the chance to experience the excitement of discovery.

Richard Marston, Center Faculty

The second year of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences REU Program got off to a great start.  Most of the students arrived on our respective campuses on Tuesday, May 27th.  The following day, there was a day-long orientation session that was shared by video conference between the two campuses.  During the first weekend, the Arkansas students visited Devil’s Den State Park while the OSU students were taken to the Oklahoma Natural History Museum in Norman followed by a trip to the Oklahoma City Memorial.  They finished the day by attending a baseball game at Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City.  On Tuesday, June 3rd, the first REU seminar of the summer was presented by Barney Farmer, a former JPL scientist who was involved with the Viking missions in the 1970s.  It was video conferenced to students and faculty from OSU who could not make the trip over.  Following the seminar, there was a reception at the home of Hazel and Derek Sears.  On Sunday, June 8th, 25, individuals from both campuses rendezvoused at the brand new Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks, OK for a wonderful behind-the-scenes tour of the facility. 

Tim Kral, Center Faculty and REU Program Co-Director