CU and CCNY join with NASA in engineering/science day for NYC students

Cornell will help host "NASA in New York Day" this Saturday, April 25, when more than 900 New York City high school students are expected to attend an event aimed at stimulating their interest in choosing engineering or science as a college major.

The NASA event, the first of its kind involving mainly 10th- and 11th-graders from all high schools in the metropolitan area, will begin at 9 a.m. in City College of New York's (CCNY) Aaron Davis Hall, 135th St. and Convent Avenue in Manhattan.

Daniel S. Goldin, NASA administrator, is expected to deliver the opening remarks, and the list of speakers will include astronauts Mario Runco Jr., who will talk on "Exploring Planet Earth," and Ellen Baker, who will speak on "Living and Working in Space."

In addition, Yervant Terzian, chair of Cornell's Department of Astronomy and director of the New York Space Grant Consortium, will discuss "Stars and Galaxies through the Hubble Space Telescope."

Highlights of the NASA event will include demonstrations of research being conducted in science and engineering at CCNY as well as tours of research laboratories. Among the exhibits will be large-scale models of the space shuttle, a one-third model of the Gemini spacecraft that took the first Americans into space, space suits, protective re-entry tiles from the shuttle and food typically eaten by NASA astronauts. There also will be undergraduate engineering and science research poster presentations.

More than 80 public, private and parochial high schools in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island will be sending participants to the event, with each school limited to 15 students. Schools have made their selections on the basis of an essay contest on the subject of why the students want to attend.

NASA Day is sponsored by the New York Space Grant Consortium in cooperation with Cornell, CCNY, the New York City Board of Education, NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies and NASA/Minority University Space Interdisciplinary Network.