The University of Missouri-St. Louis program made use of faculty expertise in astrophysics, biophysics, and materials physics and took advantage of our location in a large metropolitan area to target under-represented groups with our pre-college program using our campus planetarium and with our informal public education program at our campus observatory.

Using the UMSL Planetarium, we invited elementary and middle school groups to campus for our astronomy outreach program. In addition to the planetarium presentation, we introduced students to NASA and what subjects they would study in school if they wanted to work for NASA in the future. We then discussed phases of matter starting with dry ice on Mars, moving to frozen nitrogen on Pluto, and then to the composition of comets. Finally, we performed interactive demonstrations with dry ice and liquid nitrogen and make a comet with water, dry ice, and potting soil.

For three groups, we partnered with the Challenger Learning Center of St. Louis. Half of one group came to UMSL for the planetarium program while the other half did a simulated Space Mission at the Challenger Learning Center. Space Grant funds paid for the missions and for bus transportation for the students.

Outreach programs also benefitted from the ongoing collaboration with the Challenger Learning Center by helping us identify schools with a large population of students from under-represented groups.