HISTORY AND PURPOSE
A brief description of organization history and mission:

Challenger Learning Center of the Greater Capital Region, (CLC) is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization dedicated to building and operating a technology-based program to educate middleschool students in critical science and math concepts, and to build a bridge to local opportunities in engineering, the sciences and technology-related industries. Challenger will serve as a regional center for a curriculum to teach science, team building and problem solving.

Challenger Learning Centers were started as a living memorial by members of the families of the astronauts lost in the Challenger Space Shuttle. The project was designed to inspire enthusiasm for space science and technology. Locally, a group of educators started the Challenger Learning Center of the Greater Capital District in 2000.

The mission of the Challenger Learning Center is to inspire students and educators in the pursuit of scientific education; to ignite curiosity and excitement through innovative programs; and to initiate experimental activities in math, science and technology.

A statement of its primary purpose:

In today's rapidly developing global economy, a problem is emerging that needs the attention and involvement of all Americans to avert a national crisis in the relatively near future. For many decades, research, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. have provided economic progress, national security and a quality of life that has been the envy of other nations.

U.S. leadership position in these disciplines has been eroding in recent years. As a result, many economists are predicting that countries such as China and India will surpass the U.S. in terms of economic progress and prosperity in as little as 15 years. Clear signs already exist in the form of job migration, outsourcing of services and production supplies and huge trade deficits that convey a trend toward a declining position in the global economy.

This trend can easily portend a continual weakening of the U.S. economy with crisis-like effects on national security and broad-based quality of life issues. Obviously, the stakes are high if America continues to lose ground in the critical areas of technology and innovation in this time of rapid global economic change.

Fortunately, the downward trend can be reversed and achieving a solution need not be complicated or difficult. The solution needs to begin with the recognition that a growing gap has developed between the U.S. and several other nations in the number of scientists, engineers and technologists being produced annually. This gap, if continued, will inevitably diminish our national capability to create new products and services that are the engines for economic growth and prosperity.

Closing and reversing the gap is readily doable. An important competitive advantage resides in our outstanding U.S. university system and research facilities which have the resources and capabilities to produce a substantially increased number of highly qualified technical professionals. The limiting factor to increased output has been the lagging interest of K-12 students in science and engineering education. The straight-forward challenge to addressing our growing national problem is the need to stimulate the interest of K-12 students in science and engineering careers. Providing such stimulus is the primary mission of the Challenger Learning Center Program.

The population served as a result of this project, and how this population will benefit from the project:

The primary focus of Challenger Learning Centers is on students in the 5th through 8th grades. The immediate area covered by our charter includes an estimated 60,000 students and encompasses 93 school districts in parts of 19 counties. In addition, there are another 35,000 students within the 77 school districts in counties on the outer fringe of our charter area, which includes western Massachusetts and southern Vermont. Moreover, each year there will be about a 25 percent "churn" of students (15,000) aging out of the target group and being replaced by new students aging in.

As the Challenger program takes root it will spur development of advanced educational programs – drawing the best and brightest students into math, science and technology tracks. The Challenger experience begins with several months of classroom learning and preparation for the mission, including learning various roles required for the flight. When the students arrive to fly their mission, Controllers assign students to computer stations specializing in various aspects of conducting a space journey, such as Navigation, Life Support, or Communications.Simultaneously, other students are assigned to counterpart flight operations ‘aboard’ the Space Station, or to laboratory experiments on the station. Within a short period of time participants become completely engaged in the ‘flight’. The mission lasts approximately three hours, and at the half way point the students in the space station switch roles with those in mission control so they can experience the sensation of being in both situations

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