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Challenger center inspiring future science enthusiasts

WHEELING — At 5 a.m. local time on Labor Day, a group of students in India was learning about space exploration — and the information came to them through instructors and a distance learning feed from the Challenger Learning Center at Wheeling Jesuit University.

At the annual Challenger Center for Space Science conference in Washington last month, the center at WJU was recognized for training the most teachers of any center located on a college campus. There are 43 Challenger Learning Centers across the nation.

Jackie Shia, director of the Challenger Learning Center at WJU, attributed the center’s success to issues presented by its rural location and efforts to overcome the problem. Employees at the center had to find innovative ways to take their message to the masses, and the idea of distance learning technology was born.

“Distance learning programs developed at Wheeling Jesuit University because we are so rural, and we had to extend our footprint to hit the southern part of the state,” she said. “But we were closed-minded when we first came up with the program, and did not think we could go worldwide.”

Today, the Challenger Learning Center at WJU offers 26 programs for distance learning.

These programs — “called missions” — focus on problem-based scenarios in space in which students must use math and science skills to assist astronauts.

Prior to the missions, the students’ teachers receive lesson plans to prepare them for their learning experience at the center.

Most often these lesson plans come in English, but Shia said a Spanish version has been compiled. This is used by students primarily living in the Southwest, where English is often a second language.

She said instructors have conducted some of the virtual missions in Spanish or Korean, utilizing foreign-speaking students on campus or in the local community.

Past missions at the Challenger Learning Center have centered on knowledge about the planets, the distance of planets and the distance of the planets from each other. Students receive data in their computers, which they then use to determine the location of the astronauts.

Past missions have been called “Return to the Moon” and “Rendezvous With a Comet,” but students will have something different at WJU’s Challenger Learning Center this year.

The center is about to release its new “Mission To Mars,” with new activities, software and graphics.

The Challenger Learning Center is partnering with NASA on the program.

“We are a NASA cohort, and seeking to bring Mars to the public,” Shia said. “We are trying to get as many students as excited about science as possible.”

All seventh-grade students in Ohio County Schools partake in the missions at the center, as do many students in nearby Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Shia.

“Our goal is to ignite students’ interest in science, and focus on careers that could benefit local companies,” she said. “Too often they think science is not cool. We want to make them feel science is cool and that they can help our country and our region, as well.”

She said one student from Washington County, Pa. was so inspired by the experience they went on to a career in science, and is now employed in mission control at NASA.

“Things do happen,” Shia said. “Kids get excited about what they’re learning, and it’s up to us to not let science die, and get them excited. America is not producing scientists like it should be.”

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