NASA Astrophysics E/PO Impact: The Astrophysics Educator Ambassador Program Prof. Lynn Cominsky Education and Public Outreach Sonoma State University

E/PO Group Satellite Missions XMM-Newton – launched 12/10/1999 –Focusing soft x-ray telescope Swift – launched 11/20/2004 –Gamma-ray burst explorer Fermi (aka GLAST) – launched 6/11/2008 –High energy gamma-ray sky survey +GRBs NuSTAR – launched 6/13/2012 –Focusing hard x-ray telescope

Meet the Educator Ambassadors 3 Rear: Mandy Frantti (MI), Neta Apple (MO), Rob Sparks (AZ), Daryl Taylor (CT), Bruce Hemp (VA), Jeff Adkins (CA), Mike Ford (KS), Pam Whiffen (AZ) Front: Mary Garrett (GA), Janet Moore (IL), Teena Della (BC), David Beier (MO), Tyson Harty (GA), Linda Smith (NJ), Christine Royce (PA)

Educator Ambassador Program The EAs are a cohort of 15 master teachers who train other educators to use NASA materials created by SSU They also help us develop and test our curricular materials Since 2002, they have directly trained over 65,000 educators in North America We trained them every other year from 2002 – (Suspended in 2014) 4

Typical training week program Two day “mini-course” on specific subject –Particle physics –Gravitation and General Relativity –Dark Universe Guest speakers from NASA missions and others (e.g. Helen Quinn, Francis Everitt) Science updates for Astro missions Two days of “share-a-thon” for EAs to demonstrate new workshops 5

Evaluation External evaluators from WestEd have evaluated all the workshop data from (over 3500 surveys) The survey instrument includes 17 required, fixed-response items (mostly Likert-scale responses) and three optional questions that offer participants an opportunity to write comments. 6

Summary of Survey results Participants at EA conference sessions rate the presentations very highly, averaging 4.5 on a five-point scale; a 5 rating indicates ‘strong agreement’ with positive statements about various aspects of the presentation. Almost universally high ratings are obtained even though a wide range of participants by grade level, teaching experience or interest typically attends EA conference sessions, and they can bring quite different needs or perspectives. Participants’ written comments also were overwhelming positive or generally offered suggestions rather than complaints or criticism. 7

EAs in Action 8 Pam Whiffen Teena Della Neta Apple Janet Moore Chris Royce

For more information: - photos and bios of the EAs - for all the talks (& some videos) during the trainings from 2004 – – for more information about our group and other projects (including non-NASA) 9