Seven Lake Washington School District (LWSD) students, including four students from Redmond High School (RHS), are currently participating in Phase One of the Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) program for 2011-12.
The RHS students are: Sohum Chaudhary, Eric Kammers, Ishan Ranade, and Sean Yang.
The remaining students are: Nathaniel Prakasam and Aditi Renganathan from International Community School, and Riley Hilliker from Juanita High School.
The WAS program is a free, competitive, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education program for high school juniors in Washington. It is affiliated with NASA Johnson Space Center’s National High School Aerospace Scholars program with partner programs in Texas, Virginia and Idaho.
The program’s primary goal is to excite and prepare student to pursue careers pathways in STEM fields using a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum. Students who move on to the summer residency experience will collaborate with other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators.
Selected from 297 talented students from 110 different public, private and home-school organizations who applied to participate in WAS in November 2011, accepted students will spend the next five months competing academically for one of the 160 slots in a summer residency session held at The Museum of Flight in June and July. To qualify for the summer residency, students must satisfactorily complete 10 online lessons, consisting of research essays, space-related math problems, and detailed graphics that illustrate their ideas.
