Implementation Plan for Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP) Mission 3 to the International Space Station http://ssep.ncesse.

org Community Consortium: STEM School, Highlands Ranch, Colorado Douglas County School District, Castle Rock, CO Proposed SSEP Community Program Director/Co-Directors: Mae Guerra, Educator, STEM School, SSEP Coordinator (Intern) Sharon Combs, Educator, STEM School, SSEP Director Leanne Weyman, Assistant Principle, STEM School, SSEP Executive STEM School SSEP Implementation: All 615 students enrolled at STEM School will be required to participate in this project and will also be graded for project quality and completion using milestone grading rubrics.

Community Overview
STEM School Profile STEM School is in its second year as a new charter school in Douglas County, Colorado with an enrollment of over 600 students for the 2012-2013 school year. Currently STEM covers grades 6-10 and will add grades 11 and 12 by 2014. As a charter school, STEM is led by a board whose members are heavily involved in STEM related industries: Board Chair: Matt Smith is Vice President of Engineering for United Launch Alliance headquartered in Denver Colorado. Board Member: Darrell Phippen is a design manager for United Launch Alliance and is team lead for engineers creating payload accommodation interface hardware. Board Member: Kim Sasko is the Senior Director of Oracles On Demand Global Delivery Organization responsible for Global Incident and Event Management services. Board Member: Suzanne Stromberg serves as a Senior Instructor and Director of Undergraduate Internships in the Department of Communication at UC Denver.

STEM School also has a unique model with its afterschool Academy where industry experts conduct classes in STEM related fields. These classes are open to all STEM School students as well as the larger local community. This model is designed to open STEM opportunities to all students regardless of where they attend school.
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Demographics Students at STEM School represent 7 different Colorado school districts and over 90 different schools. Student Enrollment Demographics 2012-2013 Race Hispanic/Latino American Indian Asian African American Native Hawaiian White 2 or more races Total #Female 17 0 26 1 3 121 10 178 #Male 42 2 15 1 2 357 16 435 Total 59 2 41 2 5 478 26 613 % of Total Students 9.6% 0.3% 6.7% 0.3% 0.8% 77.7% 4.2%

Note: STEM Schools current enrollment is only 29% female and of those, 32% are minority females. This equates to only 9% minority female (not white) enrolled in this school. One of our goals is to attract more female minorities to our program by providing SSEP project highlights across schools in the Denver Metro area and encouraging project participation through positive media exposure.

SSEP Impact on STEM School Strategic Goal Attainment

The mission of STEM School is to provide a 21 st century integrated educational system of high standards that engages all students in an academically rigorous core curriculum designed around project based learning. STEM School promotes a strong foundation in the sciences, technologies, engineering and math disciplines using relevant and realworld contexts to prepare students for new work-force opportunities in post-secondary STEM careers. 21st Century Skills Addressing 21st century skills is a critical component to a successful STEM program and SSEP addresses these skills as follows: Critical thinking skills are required to propose a good scientific question. Creativity skills to design a solid experiment Communication skills to write a competitive proposal Collaboration skills to effectively work in a team environment
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Project Based Learning STEM School is focused on project based learning and will use SSEP as a mandatory semester long project for the entire school population. Each STEM school student at will be part of a team that submits a formal proposal which will allow every student to experience an extended process of inquiry while learning academic content and practicing 21st century skills.

Proposed Program Scope

All STEM School students will participate in the program. The program will be led from the science department with additional support from other core curriculum instructors such as Language Arts, Math, Technology and Art. Every science class will create teams of 3-4 students and will result in over 200 proposals. Students will be graded on their proposals since this project aligns with our curriculum. Proposals will then be judged by a group of industry personnel already associated with the school; this group includes employees of companies such as ULA, IBM, Oracle, Anschutz Medical. Stem School SSEP Project Team On campus: SSEP at STEM School will be facilitated and led by the science department. All science teachers will use the same rubric grading practices producing project milestone rubrics that will be aligned across the entire student body. Mae Guerra: experienced educator, teacher volunteer and intern, will lead a two hour after-school SSEP lab held every Tuesday and Thursday during the proposal development period. The after-school portion is a voluntary attendance extension of classroom instructions for students who want more time to work on their proposals. Local Industry team: STEM School will use local industry experts to facilitate judging and provide assistance in the after-school SSEP lab. Industries are represented from aerospace, medicine and technology.

Funding Request:
Due to our large number of students involved and the range of grade levels, STEM School is requesting 2 experiment slots, one for middle school competition and the second for high school. This is a total funding amount of approximately $30,000. This funding will allow STEM School to become the first student designed experiment aboard the International Space Station in the entire state of Colorado.
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STEM School will commit time from various departments to produce a quality crosscurricular school-wide project to promote a balanced approach to scientific inquiry. For example, Language Arts teachers will instruct technical writing and proposal skills. STEM School Matching Funds: *Note: All STEM School families are required to volunteer a minimum of 30 hours annually and many of these parents work in STEM related fields. The volunteer time is documented through the schools administration. Resource SSEP Core Teachers SSEP Additional Support Teachers SSEP Director Intern Industry Expertise (via Parent and/or Industry volunteers) Number 5 5 Hours 200 100 Burdened Hourly Rate $39 $39 Subtotal $7800 $3900

1 1 60

50 100 600

$39 $25 $50

$1950 $2500 $30,000

Total in-kind match: $46,150