Outreach

This August, CSI’s Outreach team conducted the Space Science Program at Sophie Gerson Healthy Youth’s yearly summer camp, where we ran rocket launches and observational astronomy sessions, taught students to fly drones and make simple electric circuits, hosted space-themed jeopardy, and challenged students to engineer in creative ways! Our six space science counselors set up and ran these activities for 140 middle school students over the course of the week-long camp. Some activities were familiar to the students, because Outreach had run them during Auditorium Programs at their schools. However, some were completely new—including the constellations circuits activity, which debuted at the camp this year to great success!

The circuits activity challenges students (and willing Camp Zeke Counselors!) to create a circuit using conductive copper tape and a coin battery to light up an LED. In preparation for this activity, CSI had ordered the materials necessary, but the night before the scheduled day of the activity, we realized we were missing a crucial piece—the 500 LED lights we ordered. After all space science counselors searched high and low, former Outreach directors Kate Lampo and Will Specht came up with a creative solution—to use decorative LED fairy lights from the nearest store (about 45 minutes away) instead. CSI counselors got to work splicing and twisting wires and melting off wiring insulation in order to make these fairy lights function into disconnected LEDs. After hours of work, we had created about 300 LEDS, which we were able to put to use during the activity. The joy of the students when they managed to put together a working circuit made the twists and turns of the preparation well worth it.
We can’t wait to see what camp has in store for us next year!

– Outreach Team

This past spring, CSI’s Outreach team received the Robert D. Lilley Award for Socially Responsible Engineering at Columbia’s 2024 Leadership and Excellence Awards. This award is given by the Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia to the engineering group that best creates engineering projects in economically or socially disadvantaged areas, student research projects directed towards topics that relate to socially responsible engineering, and campus education efforts that focus on engineering ethics.

We were awarded for our work with our educational space science program that reached over 1,000 students in under-resourced middle schools in the past year. Some of our work includes model rocketry, a balloon-dropping activity, and a paper-airplane lesson. In our model rocket lessons, we teach students about aerodynamics and design considerations when making a rocket, then they build their own rockets with components manufactured by CSI volunteers. We then launch the rockets at their schools to help bring these aerodynamics lessons to life. The balloon-drop activity and paper airplane lessons are interactive activities that are a part of our “auditorium programs,” where we teach students about space and engineering principles such as aerodynamics, astronomy, and structural design.

At the end of the year, we host Spaceposium as our culminating event, where members of all CSI missions are able to present about their year-long projects to fellow peers, members of the Columbia community, and students from our partner middle schools. At our most recent Spaceposium in April 2024, Outreach members gave a coding lesson to students where they learned the very basics of programming. Then, they were able to put what they learned to use by writing code to guide a robotic car through a maze. Other activities included plasma lab tours and poster sessions where middle schoolers got the chance to learn about CSI’s missions. We are so honored to be recognized with this award and look forward to continuing our work in exposing STEM to middle schoolers across the city!

Read more about the award here: https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/awards/honorees/2024

– Outreach Team

Columbia Space Initiative tabled at Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Kid’s Week to get New York City’s kids interested in engineering and space exploration.

We presented current and previous projects from the Micro-G mission, a model rocket from the rockets mission, and Roaree with a video of his trip to space on a high altitude balloon.

All of the kids that stopped by our table were really interested in our missions and many said they wanted to be future astronauts and engineers. Some of them were as young as five years old, but already had previous knowledge of rockets and current developments in the aerospace industry. We invited the kids make paper airplanes using various designs to demonstrate aerodynamic concepts like lift, drag and thrust.

Ultimately, presenting the work that CSI was a great experience because we got to share our work with curious young minds and we hopefully inspired some of them to pursue space exploration in the future!

– Chris Fryer, Micro-G

CSI’s Outreach team has taught over 200 NYC middle schoolers at MS 302 and MS 126 this past month, in partnership with the Sophie Gerson Healthy Youth Foundation and the Columbia Engineering Outreach Office in its “Engineering Speaks” outreach lecture series.

We enjoyed sharing about the history of aerospace, the basics of space science, and the cool new innovations and companies in aerospace today. Most of all, we enjoyed seeing the students’ enthusiasm and curiosity about aerospace. At the end of each lecture, we had a paper airplane competition to illustrate aerodynamic principles firsthand. We were blown away by their engineering skills - there were airplanes that traveled all the way across the auditorium, airplanes that boomeranged back to their owners, and more! Each time, students would linger afterward to ask us follow-up questions and to tell us about their future plans to become pilots or scientists. It has been a truly rewarding set of experiences, and we can’t wait to continue to inspire and be inspired by the next generation of space engineers and scientists in spring.

– Leena Chen

This Saturday was our third time participating in CU Splash, a day-long event for high school students to learn topics outside of the classroom. We taught a course called “Intro to Space Exploration,” where we introduced basic orbital mechanics, propellants, space history, and challenges in space.

For many of our students, this was their first exposure to space science and aerospace engineering.

In addition to the science, we discussed commercial space companies, international space industries and modern innovation like suit ports and inflatable space modules.

We held two sections and each had 40+ students. We had lots of fun inspiring the next generation of space travelers.

Thank you to Leena, ShaSha, Caleb, Tejit, Lily, Megan, Chris, and Garrett for making this day of space learning possible.

– Lily He