[Senate Hearing 116-617]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                                                        S. Hrg. 116-617

                      BUILDING THE SPACE WORKFORCE
                     OF THE FUTURE: STEM ENGAGEMENT
                      FOR A 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION AND SPACE

                                 of the

                         COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
                      SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            NOVEMBER 5, 2019

                               __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
                             Transportation





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                 Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov


                               ______
                                 

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

52-796 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2023













       SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                  ROGER WICKER, Mississippi, Chairman

JOHN THUNE, South Dakota             MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, 
ROY BLUNT, Missouri                      Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska                RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          GARY PETERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MIKE LEE, Utah                       TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               JON TESTER, Montana
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada

                       John Keast, Staff Director
                  Crystal Tully, Deputy Staff Director
                      Steven Wall, General Counsel
                 Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
              Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
                      Renae Black, Senior Counsel

                                 ------                                

                   SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION AND SPACE

TED CRUZ, Texas, Chairman            KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona, Ranking
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota             BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
ROY BLUNT, Missouri                  TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  GARY PETERS, Michigan
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          JON TESTER, Montana
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
MIKE LEE, Utah








                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on November 5, 2019.................................     1
Statement of Senator Cruz........................................     1
Statement of Senator Sinema......................................     3
Statement of Senator Wicker......................................     5
Statement of Senator Capito......................................    23
Statement of Senator Rosen.......................................    25
Statement of Senator Thune.......................................    27

                               Witnesses

Dr. Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Managing Director, Interplanetary 
  Initiative and Principal Investigator of NASA Psyche Mission, 
  Arizona State University.......................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................     9
Jeffrey Manber, Chief Executive Officer, Nanoracks LLC...........    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    12
J.R. (Josh) Gladden, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor for Research, 
  Professor of Physics, University of Mississippi................    14
    Prepared statement...........................................    16
SheLla Rivano Condino, Physics Teacher, Oakton High School.......    17
    Prepared statement...........................................    19

                                Appendix

Response to written question submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to:
    Dr. Linda Tarbox Elkins-Tanton...............................    39
    Jeffrey Manber...............................................    39
    J.R. (Josh) Gladden, Ph.D....................................    40
    Sheila Rivano Condino........................................    40









 
BUILDING THE SPACE WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE: STEM ENGAGEMENT FOR A 21ST 
                           CENTURY EDUCATION

                              ----------                              


                       TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2019

                               U.S. Senate,
                Subcommittee on Aviation and Space,
        Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m. in 
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ted Cruz, 
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Cruz [presiding], Wicker, Thune, Moran, 
Gardner, Capito, Sinema, Cantwell, and Rosen.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM TEXAS

    Senator Cruz. Good afternoon. This hearing is called to 
order.
    I am very pleased to see a hearing on STEM and math and 
science and precision is starting precisely at 2:30 and 0 
seconds. That is an auspicious way to begin this discussion.
    Earlier this year on one of the hottest nights of the 
summer, nearly a half million people crowded onto the National 
Mall. They were not there for a protest or to celebrate a 
national holiday, and they were not there for a concert or to 
watch a fireworks show. No. Instead, a half million people went 
there drenched in sweat to watch the story of the Apollo 11 
mission as it was projected onto the Washington Monument, 
commemorating the moment 50 years ago when Neil Armstrong and 
Buzz Aldrin took that giant leap for mankind.
    As everyone in D.C. knows, if there are a half million 
people on the Mall and it ain't a protest, something big is 
going on. And landing the first humans on the Moon and 
returning them safely to Earth marks as one of the epochal 
moments in the history of mankind.
    As we look out over our space landscape today, what we see 
is very different from the landscape of 1969. Indeed, not only 
did we succeed in going to the Moon and back again, but we have 
gone on to put robotic rovers on distant planets, celestial 
observatories in orbit that can literally peer into the 
beginnings of the universe, and we have established an enduring 
human presence in low-Earth orbit. In the span of a single 
lifetime, we have seen space fundamentally transformed from an 
uninhabited void or a scientific novelty to an integral part of 
our daily lives and the world economy.
    Space is often referred to as the last frontier. And 
rightfully so. Much like the first frontiers of exploration, 
space is hard. It takes meticulous planning and extraordinary 
determination, and even then nothing is guaranteed. It is 
dangerous, but the last frontier shares a critical aspect with 
the first frontiers through its power now and tomorrow to 
inspire us.
    The space race of the 1960s inspired Americans to aim 
higher, to dream bigger than they ever had before, to literally 
shoot for the Moon. And I believe the burgeoning space sector 
of today can do the same for an even bigger and broader swath 
of the United States and the world.
    Just a few weeks ago, we witnessed the historic all-female 
space walk on the International Space Station, the first ever. 
And when the United States returns to the Moon as a part of the 
Artemis program--Artemis, of course, being the twin sister of 
Apollo--well, NASA has committed that we will land the first 
woman ever on the surface of the Moon and it will be an 
American astronaut who steps forth on the Moon. As the father 
of two young daughters, that makes me very proud, indeed.
    As we return to bold space exploration, we do so not only 
with a much more diverse astronaut corps, but also a much more 
diverse set of commercial and nongovernmental partners. As we 
move out on these plans, it is worth remembering the success of 
Apollo 11 and our national space program as a whole was due in 
no small part to the contributions of a diverse work force, 
including countless women who were working behind the scenes 
and whose stories have only recently become household names.
    One of those women, Dr. Christine Darden, testified before 
this Subcommittee earlier this year. Dr. Darden was one of the 
famed human computers at NASA, and without her work and the 
work of many other so-called computers, many of them African 
American women, we never could have sent astronauts into space, 
let alone brought them back safely.
    Unfortunately, for far too long, Dr. Darden and the other 
human computers' contributions were hidden, relegated to the 
background for a time. Her story and the story of others like 
her serves as a reminder of the lessons we need to learn to 
ensure that we are cultivating and elevating talent and 
leadership not based on race or gender, but based on merit, 
based on skill, based on hard work, and based on passion.
    Today's hearing is about building the kind of workforce 
that ensures NASA and the diverse group of partners we return 
to space exploration has the skilled base of people it needs to 
be successful now and in the future, that ensures the space 
economy can continue to grow, and that we will be successful in 
establishing the United States of America as the leader and a 
true space-faring nation.
    To accomplish this, we can and should leverage the 
inspiration of space and space exploration to get kids of all 
ages, of all backgrounds, resources engaged, excited about 
science and technology and engineering and math.
    But that alone is not enough. Creating the space workforce 
for the future will require us to take a serious look at the 
road ahead, to explore unconventional partnerships and roles of 
responsibility and to take other decisive actions as needed to 
maintain U.S. leadership in space. Getting it right will be a 
complex and challenging undertaking. After all, space is hard.
    But I am reminded and encouraged by something Gene Kranz, 
the Apollo 11 flight director, said of that mission when he 
testified before this subcommittee in July of this year: what 
America will dare, America will do.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about 
their work in STEM education and what suggestions they might 
have for how we in Congress can act. And I want to thank, in 
particular, the Ranking Member for her initiative in proposing 
that we hold this hearing and for her leadership, bipartisan 
leadership, that has strengthened this Committee, and I look 
forward to continuing working alongside her many years to come.
    With that, I recognize the Ranking Member.

               STATEMENT OF HON. KYRSTEN SINEMA, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA

    Senator Sinema. Well, thank you, Chairman Cruz, for holding 
this hearing. I am excited about today.
    Our STEM workforce is at a critical juncture. The U.S. 
space economy is booming, but if we do not build a strong STEM 
education pipeline, we will face a deficit of millions of 
workers over the next decade, putting our economy and national 
security at risk.
    Congress, Federal agencies like NASA, industry partners, 
and most importantly, educational institutions must work 
together to develop and prepare a 21st century workforce so we 
continue to lead in space and so our economy remains innovative 
and strong.
    So thank you today to Dr. Elkins-Tanton, Mr. Manber, Dr. 
Gladden, and Ms. Condino for joining us today to discuss this 
important issue.
    Since it was established in 1958, NASA has had productive 
partnerships with universities across the country, including a 
few in Arizona. As we develop more advanced space technologies, 
set large goals for the country's space program, and grow our 
aerospace industry, we must continue these partnerships to 
ensure we have a strong work force. This starts with educating 
students and giving them hands-on research opportunities to 
excel in STEM fields.
    Universities and students across the country currently work 
with NASA on important projects such as mission monitoring, 
research and analysis. In my home State of Arizona, Arizona 
State University, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona 
University all work with NASA to further its mission both big 
and small. The talented faculty across the state propose 
innovative ideas and bring new opportunities to students.
    When Administrator Bridenstine testified in front of the 
full Commerce Committee earlier this year, he said, quote, NASA 
has had amazing success with university partnerships. Arizona 
universities are leading the world when it comes to university 
engagement with NASA and developing these programs and 
projects.
    For example, at ASU, Dr. Elkins-Tanton's mission, Psyche, 
marks the first time a university has led a deep space NASA 
mission. She and her team will be the first scientists to study 
an asteroid, which is remarkably similar to a planetary core, 
once the spacecraft launches in 2023 and arrives at the 
asteroid in 2030.
    University of Arizona is also paving the way for future 
missions with its work on OSIRIS REx. Dr. Dante Lauretta leads 
the science team and the mission's science observation planning 
and data processing. The team at University of Arizona is 
critical to the success of this mission that will bring the 
first asteroid sample to Earth.
    All three of Arizona's public universities also participate 
in the Arizona Space Grant Consortium, which is jointly funded 
by NASA and the three universities. This Space Grant works to 
attract and retain students in STEM fields. In Arizona, the 
Space Grant Consortium partners awarded 175 paid internships 
and fellowships to Arizona students in 2018 alone, which allows 
students to work alongside principal investigators on a mission 
like Psyche or OSIRIS REx, actively building Arizona's STEM 
workforce.
    These mission and research advancements offer us critical 
insights into space, and they also spark interest and passion 
in our next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and 
engineers.
    But students are not the only ones benefiting because NASA 
gains innovative ideas which, when paired with their expertise 
and resources, can push the boundaries of what we thought was 
possible.
    When the Administrator testified, he also stated that 
university projects typically meet both cost and schedule. At 
an agency like NASA where money and time are both limited and 
projects are sometimes over budget and behind schedule, these 
partnerships are key to maximizing science and discovery across 
the universe.
    As we look ahead, we must grow these partnerships, retain 
the knowledge that is gained from them and train the next 
generation. That is the only way we can ensure we have a 
workforce ready to keep America at the forefront of space.
    This week, we are introducing legislation to help address 
the STEM workforce concerns that are raised today. The National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2019, 
which I am looking forward to introducing with Chairman Cruz, 
Chairman Wicker, and Ranking Member Cantwell, includes 
provisions that require NASA to establish an outreach program 
to encourage high school students to pursue careers in 
technical education and gives NASA the ability to establish and 
grow lasting partnerships between itself and universities 
through research centers.
    I am also proud to work with Senator Capito on legislation 
which will modernize the space grant program for the first time 
since 1988. Our bill will streamline the program and ensure 
that State consortia have the resources to recruit and retrain 
the next generation of scientists, engineers, and 
mathematicians.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on ways we can 
address these issues and the other issues we face as a country.
    Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    I now recognize the Chairman of the Full Committee for his 
opening statement.

                STATEMENT OF HON. ROGER WICKER, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI

    Senator Wicker. Well, I want to congratulate my two 
colleagues on their excellent opening statements.
    Senator Cruz described the crowd witnessing the 50th 
anniversary in dramatic, vivid, almost poetic words. I could 
almost sense the pungent fragrance of that sweaty throng 
gathered on the Mall.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. Almost like a Senate hearing.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Wicker. The clerk will note crosstalk and just say 
``crosstalk.''
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Wicker. In the 50 years since the Apollo 11, NASA 
has continued to achieve incredible feats. None of these 
missions would have been possible without the support and 
partnership of America's educational system, in particular the 
talent and expertise found in our universities. And that is why 
we are here today.
    University researchers continue to lead groundbreaking 
projects in space technology and scientific discovery. In doing 
so, they involve students, some of whom become scientists, some 
of whom become engineers, others mathematicians for NASA and in 
the private sector. Maintaining this pipeline is vital to 
maintain America's preeminence in outer space. And I am glad to 
be a cosponsor of the legislation Senator Sinema mentioned.
    Today's panel represents a cross section of the NASA STEM 
education ecosystem. I would like to extend a particular 
welcome to Dr. Josh Gladden, Vice Chancellor for Research at my 
alma mater, the University of Mississippi. Ole Miss' work with 
NASA includes on graphene, a material with transformative 
potential for many applications, including space flight. In 
fact, this past weekend, NASA launched a graphene research 
payload to the International Space Station.
    So thank you all for being here today. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, and I look forward to a great discussion on improving 
STEM engagement to help build the space work force.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will say your 
remarks reminded me--growing up, both my parents were 
mathematicians, and an old engineer's joke about the Washington 
Monument is a mathematician and physicist and an engineer go to 
the Washington Monument. And they are each discussing how to 
figure out how tall it is.
    And the mathematician says it is very simple. All I need is 
a length of string and a transit. I can measure the distance 
through the transit. I can measure the angle to the top of the 
monument. It is a simple matter of trigonometry to figure out 
the height of the monument.
    The physicist says, no, no, no, it is much simpler than 
that. I will take the elevator to the top of the monument. I 
will tie the string around the transit. I will lower it down to 
the bottom of the monument and I will measure the length of the 
string.
    The engineer looks at both of them, looks at the tour 
guide, and says, how tall is the damn thing.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. With that, I am happy to introduce our 
witnesses.
    Our first witness, Dr. Linda Tarbox Elkins-Tanton, is the 
Managing Director of the Interplanetary Initiative and the 
Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche Mission at Arizona 
State University. Her research revolves around terrestrial 
planetary formation, magma oceans, and subsequent planetary 
evolution, including magmatism and interactions between rocky 
planets and their atmospheres. She also promotes and 
participates in education initiatives such as inquiry and 
exploration, teaching methodologies, and leadership and team 
building for scientists and engineers. Dr. Elkins-Tanton also 
currently serves on the standing review board for the Europa 
mission and served on the Mars panel of the planetary decadal 
survey and on the Mars 2020 rover science definition team.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton received her Ph.D. in geology and 
geophysics from MIT.
    Our second witness is Mr. Jeffrey Manber, who is the 
founder and CEO of Nanoracks. Since 2009, Nanoracks has created 
products and offered research services for the commercial 
utilization of space. Today Nanoracks is the single largest 
private investor on the International Space Station with over 
$40 million of private capital dedicated to commercial 
facilities and equipment. Nanoracks employs 70 people in Texas 
and has launched 250 small satellites and over 800 experiments 
to the ISS.
    Mr. Manber is also Chairman of DreamUp, an educational 
public benefit corporation that lets students pursue 
opportunities in space-based research and education.
    Mr. Manber is a graduate of Northwestern University.
    Our third witness is Dr. Josh Gladden, who is the Vice 
Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs at the 
University of Mississippi. In this role, Dr. Gladden works to 
facilitate research and research funding, as well as provide 
support for all funded projects at the university.
    Prior to this role, Dr. Gladden served as Associate Vice 
Chancellor for Research and as the Director of the National 
Center for Physical Acoustics. Dr. Gladden also served in 
elected national leadership positions including as a member of 
both the executive committee for the National Spectrum 
Consortium and chair of the Physical Acoustics Technical 
Committee of the Acoustical Society of America.
    Dr. Gladden received a Ph.D. degree in physics from the 
Pennsylvania State University.
    And finally, Ms. Sheila Condino is currently a physics 
teacher at Oakton High School in Vienna, Virginia, but she is 
also the founder and still an advisor of the famed Rocketry 
Club at Presidio High School in Presidio, Texas. For those of 
you who do not know, Presidio is located along the Rio Grande 
River, 240 miles south of El Paso, and resides in one of the 
most remote parts of the continental United States. For most 
people in Presidio, English is a second language, and many 
people face tough economic challenges, making it hard for 
students to focus solely on school.
    However, even under those circumstances, Presidio High 
School's Rocketry Club has consistently placed well in contests 
across the country, and as a result, they have become a well-
respected rocketry team. During her time in Presidio, Ms. 
Condino and her students excelled qualifying for the national 
finals at the Team America Rocketry Challenge.
    In 2011, Ms. Condino was chosen by the National Aviation 
Hall of Fame selection committee to receive the Scott 
Crossfield Aerospace Education Teacher of the Year Award.
    Ms. Condino, received her bachelor's degree in physics from 
Philippine Normal University in Manila, Philippines.
    And with that, I welcome each of the witnesses and welcome 
Dr. Elkins-Tanton to give her testimony.

       STATEMENT OF DR. LINDA T. ELKINS-TANTON, MANAGING 
DIRECTOR, INTERPLANETARY INITIATIVE AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, 
         NASA PSYCHE MISSION, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Chairman Wicker, Chairman Cruz, Ranking 
Member Cantwell, Ranking Member Sinema, and members of the 
Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak 
today. I am testifying on my own behalf.
    I am Managing Director and Co-Chair with University 
President Michael Crow of ASU's Interplanetary Initiative, 
which I will talk about a little bit today, and also PI of the 
NASA Discovery mission Psyche, the 14th in the Discovery 
portfolio, as mentioned by Chairman Cruz. Thank you.
    We have a vision for an optimistic human space future, and 
by ``we'' I mean we in this room. We have this vision. We want 
humans to be an interplanetary species, and we want a situation 
where our space exploration improves society on Earth and our 
knowledge and care of the Earth itself. Those are the stakes 
that we are talking about. These really are huge times for us 
thinking about us going interplanetary, taking these steps.
    Here are three key university-NASA partnership needs.
    First is workforce development. We need talent to support 
the growing aspirations of our Nation and to work with other 
countries as the world's continuing leader in space. Therefore, 
education has to be future-facing and workforce-oriented. I 
think this is a very important thing to stress, that we are in 
the information age now. The educational style of the 
industrial era should be behind us. We need to look forward.
    Second, returning to the Moon, this time to stay, will 
require more than just engineers, scientists, and astronauts. 
We need everyone involved, every aspect of society. We need 
artists and philosophers. We need sociologists and 
psychologists. We need business leaders and philosophers. These 
are the kinds of connections that universities are really good 
at putting together for a push like the push to become 
interplanetary.
    And third, this full stakeholder triangle of NASA and 
universities and the private sector is required for our 
interplanetary future. Nonprofit universities are uniquely 
placed to create rapid responsive teams and transfer the 
technological intellectual property produced at universities 
into the private sector to the benefit of the space sector and 
also to the American taxpayer. This transfer has to speed up.
    So now is the time to grow our partnerships in these 
fruitful, more targeted ways. Now is the time to set up 
university-affiliated research centers and other such 
mechanisms to speed up the development of specific solutions 
and accelerate the flow of knowledge and technology to NASA and 
to the private sector.
    ASU is here to meet this challenge with a student 
population of over 100,000 and as the number one ranked school 
for university innovation 5 years in a row. It astonishes me 
coming from the East Coast to see what a big public university 
can be, and so many of us in this room understand the value of 
these amazing institutions. And we are lucky in Arizona to have 
several.
    At ASU, our space sector partners include over 70 private 
sector organizations, over 30 universities, and over 20 
government agencies, labs, and centers. We have been working 
very hard in the interplanetary initiative to develop new ways 
to put together research teams that are effective, rapid, and 
interdisciplinary, and include all the sectors. I feel strongly 
that this triangle of three sectors--we have to figure out how 
to bring those together to speed up innovation and speed up our 
path to space. And we have been working on that specifically. 
We have identified many of the big questions we have to answer 
to achieve our space future, and we have begun to answer those 
questions.
    On the Psyche mission, we were challenged by NASA to make a 
bigger student collaboration with greater impact. We pioneered 
ways to create interdisciplinary capstone teams where students 
learn real team collaborative skills while working on real NASA 
mission challenges. We have, for example, student graphic 
designers, student project managers and marketers working with, 
for example, student electrical and mechanical engineers. This 
is where the project managers actually get to help manage a 
project. We have cohorts of student artists producing 
inspiration and outreach.
    And even though we are only 2 years into this mission, we 
have a total of over 500 students who have worked with Psyche 
already at a total of 27 universities from 15 states. And I say 
this particularly to underscore my personal commitment that 
this is not, of course, just about my university or just about 
Arizona. This is about our society at large and our nation, and 
I believe very strongly in bringing all sectors together. That 
is what I am trying to work at in my career in every way.
    The age of this Prussian style compliant industrial 
workforce is over. You know what I am talking about. We do not 
need to train better test takers. We need to change the nature 
of education from a fixation on the memorization of a specific 
content, something that I call the sacred content, the content 
that your advisor taught you and you feel that you need to 
teach the next person. We need to teach the ability to problem 
solve, to assess data, and to work effectively in teams both 
sharing information, criticizing and understanding information, 
and giving and receiving feedback, things that often we do not 
really practice until we are in the workforce. This is the 
education of the future because the future is actually filled 
with jobs that do not exist today. They do not exist today. So 
we have to teach the process skills.
    In the fall of 2020, the ASU Interplanetary Initiative will 
launch the most forward-looking workforce-facing undergraduate 
program to date. It is a part of our answer to education in the 
information age. The bachelor of science in technological 
leadership is a scalable three-year degree program using 
exploration learning techniques in the classroom and having 
students spend every summer in the workforce in internships. 
Every student will learn the fundamental content for the future 
of programming, statistics, calculus, collaborative problem-
solving, communication, positive team psychology, and they will 
also learn team communication, ethical leadership, and critical 
thinking via a special methodology that we have been working on 
for years.
    We can accelerate space development by connecting 
universities, NASA, and the private sector for knowledge 
sharing and rapidly targeted innovation. We can be system 
integrators, but even more importantly, we can create and 
deploy the teams with members of all three sectors to solve the 
greatest challenges.
    Together with my sister universities, we are ready to 
create our future. So let us go to space together.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Elkins-Tanton follows:]

 Prepared Statement of Dr. Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Managing Director, 
   Interplanetary Initiative and Principal Investigator, NASA Psyche 
                   Mission, Arizona State University
Intensifying and targeting NASA-University partnerships for our space 
        future
    Full Committee Chairman Wicker, Full Committee Ranking Member 
Cantwell, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Sinema, and Members of the 
Committee, thank you for allowing me to speak today. I am testifying in 
my personal capacity. I am the co-chair, with university President 
Michael Crow, of the Interplanetary Initiative at ASU, and I am the 
Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission, the 14th in the 
Discovery program.
    We have a vision an optimistic human space future, we, in this 
room, have this vision, where we are an interplanetary species, and 
where our space exploration improves society on Earth and our knowledge 
and care of Earth itself. Becoming multi-planetary in mind and in 
reality is essential for the continued growth of civilization.
    To achieve this future we need all stakeholders moving fast. Two of 
the most critical stakeholders in this space future are NASA and 
American universities. Our partnership, the partnership between 
universities and NASA, is central and crucial to the future of space 
exploration and settlement.
    NASA partners with universities in many ways, though the most 
common is through research grants and project contracts. But to speed 
forward in the way we must to reach the Moon and Mars, we need to focus 
and hone these partnerships.
    Here are three key examples of university-NASA partnership needs:

  1.  Workforce development: we need talent to support the growing 
        aspirations of our nation, and to work with other countries as 
        the world's continued leader in space. Therefore, education has 
        to be future-facing, and workforce-oriented.

  2.  Returning to the Moon, this time to stay, will require more than 
        just engineers, astronauts, and scientists; it will require 
        medical professionals, legal and policy experts, architects, 
        writers, philosophers, and business leaders. Much of the 
        research among these disciplines takes place in universities.

  3.  The stakeholder triangle of NASA--universities--private sector is 
        necessary for our space future requires the full involvement 
        of. Non-profit universities are uniquely placed to communicate 
        the needs, create rapid responsive teams, and transfer the 
        research and technology intellectual property produced at 
        universities through partnership with NASA into the private 
        sector, to the great benefit of both the space industry and the 
        American taxpayer.

    Now is the time to grow our partnerships in these more fruitful, 
targeted ways: Now is the time to set up University Affiliated Research 
Centers and other such mechanisms to speed up the development of 
specific solutions, and accelerate the flow of knowledge and technology 
to NASA and to the private sector.
    ASU is here to meet this challenge with a student population of 
100K+ and as the #1 ranked school for innovation, five years in a row. 
Under president Michael Crow and his vision for the New American 
University, ASU is redefining the landscape of public higher education. 
It's a more inclusive and collaborative model than any other 
university. We are here to solve real-world problems, and educate for 
the future. Our partners value our ability to meet their needs, and on 
their schedule.
    A vibrant, deep workforce is critical to our future. And the age of 
the Prussian-style compliant industrial workforce is over. We don't 
need to train better sitters-still, better passive listeners. We need 
to change the nature of education from a fixation on a specific content 
memorization to the ability to problem-solve, assess data, and work 
effectively in teams, both sharing information and giving and receiving 
feedback. This is the education of the future: Educating for the 
processes, the transferrable skills, that every person needs for work 
and life, and to speed forward the economy of the future, which is 
filled with jobs that don't exist today.
    ASU has created the Interplanetary Initiative to specifically meet 
the needs of aerospace and execute on the vision of the administration. 
For three years we have been developing the most innovative ways to 
build research teams that are effective, rapid, and interdisciplinary, 
and we've developed really new educational programs that create 
collaborative problem-solvers for the future workforce. We identified 
many of the big questions that we will have to answer to achieve our 
space future. And we've begun the work to answer those questions.
    Together with our sister universities ASU can accelerate space 
development in the following ways:

   Connecting universities, NASA, and the private sector for 
        knowledge sharing and rapid targeted innovation--being system 
        integrators, but even more, creating and deploying the teams to 
        solve the greatest challenges

   Developing core technologies needed to support the mission

   Training the future workforce

    We're ready now. Let's go to space together.
Comment on university-led space missions
    As you all know, NASA flies both flagship missions, that are 
organized from NASA Headquarters, and competed missions, which are led 
by scientists either an universities or at labs or NASA centers. Each 
has its purpose and place in our exploration of space. Flagship 
missions are critical for stimulating development of new technology and 
for fulfilling the most complex of planetary goals.
    Flagship missions can engage a broader swath of the community 
through competed calls for instruments. These calls can bring new 
groups onto missions, but the project scientist then has the challenge 
of organizing and uniting disconnected sub-teams.
    Competed missions have the advantage of being conceived of, 
budgeted, and planned as a whole from the beginning. Flagships, in 
comparison, are planned in segments and not under a single person's 
uniting vision.
    University-led competed missions, in particular, are regularly 
coming in on time and on or even under budget. These are sometimes the 
results of that single uniting leadership. Both the science vision, the 
results, and the correct scheduling and budgeting make it clear that 
university-led missions are a critical part of the NASA portfolio.

    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    Mr. Manber.

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY MANBER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NANORACKS 
                              LLC

    Mr. Manber. Thank you. Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member 
Sinema, Senator Wicker, and other distinguished members of the 
Aviation and Space Subcommittee, thank you for giving me the 
opportunity to return to this room to testify.
    I am going to talk about something a little different about 
how we can use and we are using the commercial pathway to space 
to ensure we have a workforce for the next generation beyond to 
keep us in the lead as a space-faring nation.
    When we opened the doors at Nanoracks in 2009, we were met 
with a pleasant surprise. Our first customers were schools, 
something we never predicted. Our first experiments on Space 
Station were small nanolabs that were developed by middle 
school students. The parents literally held bake sales not for 
their soccer team but to send their very own space science 
experiments to the ISS via the Nanoracks Space Act Agreement 
with NASA. This is something that could never have been 
imagined before the commercial pathway. So there was no direct 
NASA funding, but there was the public-private partnership with 
NASA that has only taken off since.
    One of our major educational partners is the Student 
Spaceflight Experiments Program run by Dr. Jeff Goldstein, 
which has been a flagship program for us at Nanoracks and 
DreamUp. They are now on their 15th mission to the 
International Space Station. They have involved over 100,000 
students, and they learn about all aspects of the process from 
designing the payloads to the curriculums, to launching, to 
sending it to space, and the return. And again, nearly all of 
this has been done with no direct NASA funding.
    And just this weekend, Nanoracks flew the first-ever oven 
to the International Space Station for our friends in the Zero 
G Kitchen, and you may have heard that the first customer is 
the DoubleTree, which is baking cookies. And before you laugh 
and before you say this has no place at an educational hearing, 
let me say that DoubleTree and Hilton are working with 
Scholastic, and they have put a program in place in 50,000 
schools across the country involving 1 million students with 
curriculum to show them how baking is different on the Earth 
than in microgravity. And this is how we capture the hearts and 
minds of the younger people. And let me say that these are the 
students that will one day bring humans to Mars, and yes, they 
are going to want dessert when they get there.
    So these are just two significant examples of hundreds of 
payloads that I can reference. The commercially funded 
experiments that we have flown to the ISS include plant growth 
chambers, fluid chambers, DNA sequencing, all paid for by the 
parents, the students, the sponsors, but not again direct NASA 
funding. Of course, we need NASA. We need that public-private 
partnership, but this is a new model. It is one model for 
assuring education of our workforce.
    And let me add, Chairman Cruz, that Nanoracks and DreamUp 
have flown by now almost 60 educational payloads from Texas 
schools from Hawkins, Houston, Burleson, El Paso, San Antonio, 
Austin, Buda, and more. And I hope my New York twang did not 
destroy anything there. OK?
    Senator Sinema, we have also flown four experiments to the 
Space Station from Arizona, and just this weekend from Wallops 
Island, we had 15 students from Arizona State and they deployed 
commercially a CubeSat satellite. And it was wonderful to meet 
all the students. And they are great, and it gives us all 
optimism.
    So I am happy to provide the Committee with our full list 
of statistics for all the districts in which we have flown 
payloads and what we are doing in the future.
    But we can do better, and we can do more to prepare the 
workforce for the coming space economy.
    First off, both DreamUp and Nanoracks know we can do more 
to bring our under-represented communities to space. We have 
begun a dedicated effort to involve historically black colleges 
and universities, and I should have some good news in signing 
our first historically black college and university in the next 
couple of weeks.
    And second, we must do more than have just engineers, and 
you have mentioned that. Space is more than satellites and 
rockets. We have to engage agricultural colleges like Texas A&M 
or Prairie View A&M. We need to involve biology departments and 
pharmaceutical students to help find that cure for cancer in 
the microgravity of space that we have long thought was 
possible.
    And finally, by 2025, as our Nation and industry is focused 
on the return to the Moon, we are driven to meet an exciting 
goal. Nanoracks and DreamUp are working to ensure by 2025 we 
have sent at least one student research project from every 
congressional district to the International Space Station. This 
is how we make sure that we have opened the eyes of all the 
students from all sectors of our society.
    We need the excitement, the tools, the cost efficiencies, 
and the responsiveness of the private sector. It is part of 
this public-private partnership that my colleagues, mostly from 
the university sector, are talking about today. We need to 
assure that the workforce of tomorrow is ready to keep us on 
the Moon, move us on to Mars, and just as importantly, unlock 
the new discoveries in the unique environment of space.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Manber follows:]

    Prepared Statement of Jeffrey Manber, Chief Executive Officer, 
                             Nanoracks LLC
    Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Sinema, and other distinguished 
members of the Aviation and Space Subcommittee, thank you for giving me 
the opportunity to return to this room to testify before you. I look 
forward to discussing how commercial access to the International Space 
Station has provided an unprecedented educational experience to over a 
million students across the United States.
    Let me begin today by explaining that I am here in two different 
capacities. I am, of course, representing Nanoracks as the CEO, but I 
am also Chairman of the Board for DreamUp, Nanoracks' educational 
sister company. Once just a division in Nanoracks, we spun DreamUp out 
to be a standalone public benefit corporation because the business of 
providing educational access to space was, and remains today, strong 
and important. DreamUp's sole focus is bringing space to the classroom, 
and the classroom to space.
    We opened the doors at Nanoracks in 2009 with the goal to make 
space accessible to everyone. I am proud to say today that the very 
first customers that brought Nanoracks into business were in fact, 
schools. Our very first experiments were small projects that were 
developed by middle school students. These kids quite literally held 
bake sales--not to sponsor their soccer team, or raise money for the 
school dance, but to send their very own science experiment to the 
International Space Station via a Nanoracks Space Act Agreement with 
NASA. This is something that could never be imagined before the 
commercial pathway. Nanoracks standardized and miniaturized 
technologies as well has created programs that made something as 
complicated and expensive as space, into something that was both 
affordable and doable within one school year.
    One of our major educational partners is the Student Spaceflight 
Experiments Program, run by Dr. Jeff Goldstein, which has been a 
flagship program for Nanoracks and DreamUp since our first flights on 
the Space Shuttle. Dr. Goldstein's program is now on their 15th mission 
to the Space Station, and he has engaged nearly 100,000 students across 
the country in the spaceflight process--from creating and hypothesizing 
an experiment, submitting a proposal for review, building an 
experiment, flying it to space, and receiving the experiment back on 
the ground for analysis. Of course, not every proposal is selected--but 
even those which aren't are provided a unique classroom experience 
where they think critically, collaborate, and build a proposal 
strategy, just as they would as future NASA or industry employees.
    Notably, all of this has been done with no direct NASA funding.
    Dr. Goldstein's program is one of many incredible programs that was 
built on commercial access to the Space Station. Just this weekend, 
Nanoracks flew the first-ever oven to the Space Station, set to bake 
DoubleTree cookies on orbit. Never before has something been baked from 
raw ingredients in microgravity. This provides not only for a 
fascinating microgravity experiment contributing to how we endure long-
duration space travel, but also allowed a private enterprise to build 
an educational program, in partnership with Scholastic, that was 
delivered to one million students in 50,000 classrooms across the 
United States. Using a symbol of hospitality, this experiment shows 
what will happen to one of the most relatable items on Earth--a 
chocolate chip cookie--in the complex environment of microgravity. 
Students who have never been engaged in space before, now have a 
tangible object they recognize, and can think critically about what 
would happen when gravity is taken away, and are learning how the 
International Space Station and NASA are trying to best understand the 
science behind human exploration. These are the students that may one 
day bring humans to Mars--and yes, they are going to want desert when 
they get there.
    These are just two significant examples of hundreds that I can 
reference. To date, Nanoracks has flown nearly 600 educational 
experiments to the Space Station--experiments which include building 
plant growth chambers and fluid chambers, materials aggregation, DNA 
sequencing, and so much more.
    If I might add, Chairman Cruz, that Nanoracks and DreamUp have 
flown nearly 60 educational payloads to the Space Station from Texas 
schools--from Hawkins, Houston, Burleson, El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, 
Buda, and more.
    Senator Sinema, we have also flown four experiments to the Space 
Station from Arizona--including a university small satellite that 
launched just this past Saturday! Over 15 students from Arizona State 
University joined my team in Wallops Island to watch their hard work 
take flight.
    I am beyond proud of the educational outreach done by both 
Nanoracks and DreamUp, but I would be remiss if I didn't use this 
platform to share that we as a nation have so much more work to do.
    These 600 payloads represent so much hard work done by students, 
teachers, parents, and community leaders across the country--but the 
strong majority come from well-off communities. Let's do more to bring 
our underrepresented communities to space.
    So today, Nanoracks and DreamUp have begun a dedicated effort to 
engage Historically Black Colleges and Universities--and I hope to 
share in the coming weeks some exciting news about these efforts. 
Additionally, we will show that it's more than just engineers we are 
looking for in the aerospace industry. We need to better engage 
agricultural colleges like Texas A&M or Prairie View A&M, we need 
involve biology departments and pharmaceutical colleges to find that 
cure for Cancer. . Space is more than engineering today, and we are 
dedicated to assuring we are fueled by more than a handful of schools.
    Just last week, the 2019 National Assessment of Educational 
Progress showed that average scores of fourth and eighth grade students 
have declined since 2017. The Secretary of Education was quoted as 
saying that America's `antiquated approach' to education fails too many 
children.
    This means that the model in which an educator, who holds all the 
knowledge, stands in front of his or her classroom and imparts 
knowledge to their students does not work anymore. The world is 
changing too quickly, innovation happens too fast, and we must give 
students real, hands-on experiences that teach them 21st Century 
Skills, particularly the ability to think on their feet, adapt, and 
persevere (even when they ``fail'').
    We can do better by engaging the full spectrum of students in space 
exploration as a clear path to make our next generations bolder and 
brighter than my generation.
    Since we're talking about education, let me provide the committee a 
report card.
    America has been doing great work in building up the next workforce 
in STEM fields. The commercial pathway has provided unprecedented 
access to students both in America and across the world, and created 
job opportunities once never imagined. We have quite literally changed 
the lives of students, and opened their eyes to the wonders of space. 
But let's together cast a wider net. Funding for NASA's educational 
division has long been debated. Let's not tie NASA's hands behind their 
backs when it comes to educational outreach. Let's allow NASA the 
freedom as other agencies have to have robust STEM programs. NASA is 
likely one of the only government agencies that can inspire both a 5 
year old and a 50 year old--something no other government agency can 
boast. If we want to maintain American leadership in space, it's by 
investing in the kids today that will be the future NASA Administrator, 
or the future Chairman of this Subcommittee.
    Today, I am announcing that Nanoracks and DreamUp are assuring that 
every Congressional district in the United States has sent at least one 
student research project to the International Space Station by 2025. We 
will work with industry and educational organizations to assure that 
the workforce taking us to Mars will be strong, world-class and 
inclusive of all Americans.
    I ask the Committee to join me and my team as we ensure America's 
leadership in space via these ambitious but critical goals.
    I am happy to provide the Committee with our full list of 
statistics for all of the districts in which we've flown payloads, and 
further information on our educational outreach products both on the 
ground and on-orbit.
    Thank you.

    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    Dr. Gladden.

            STATEMENT OF J.R. (JOSH) GLADDEN, Ph.D.,

            VICE CHANCELLOR FOR RESEARCH, PROFESSOR

             OF PHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

    Dr. Gladden. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, let 
me first thank you for the opportunity to provide my 
perspective on the role that universities can and should play 
in the development of the nation's STEM workforce to provide 
NASA with the engineers and scientists needed to keep 
accomplishing its mission into the next generation.
    Chairman Cruz, you did a fantastic job of introducing me. 
One little bit, if you go back a little deeper, I was a physics 
teacher for about 5 years. So Ms. Condino and I can talk shop 
afterwards.
    As with many technical objectives and challenges we will 
face in the next generation, the complexity of missions at NASA 
will only increase. It is incumbent upon higher education to 
prepare a workforce ready to meet those challenges.
    One critical element in preparing this unique workforce is 
the necessity to ingrain in them a predilection and a passion 
for lifelong learning. Transformative technologies are no 
longer coming once a generation. They are coming once a decade. 
We have several programs and initiatives at the University of 
Mississippi to address these educational challenges.
    We have designed and are in the process of building a 
unique 200,000 square foot STEM education facility. What makes 
this space unique is that it is designed from the ground up 
around collaboration across disciplines and active-learning 
teaching methods that focus on small-group project work and 
interactive technologies. These instruction methods have been 
shown to both improve the comprehension of the science and 
engineering principles, as well as promote group problem-
solving skills.
    Another unique program at UM is our Center for 
Manufacturing Excellence. All CME students major in 
engineering, business, or accounting, but they also share a 
body of coursework across all of these disciplines. CME 
students focus on group projects, communications skills, and 
understanding a holistic view of a particular problem, from the 
technical all the way to the financial. We cannot predict the 
technologies that these graduates will engage during their 
careers, but we do know that they will always need to work in 
teams and understand the bigger picture.
    Universities also play a key role in developing and 
disseminating next generation engineering principles. Lean 
engineering, design thinking, additive manufacturing and 
additive construction are important examples. Design thinking 
helps break down complex, multidimensional design problems into 
a manageable framework while lean engineering realizes those 
designs through highly efficient production and manufacturing. 
A challenge here, however, is not to sacrifice the technical 
foundations upon which all of these concepts are built.
    Additive manufacturing and additive construction will play 
vital roles in any long-term space mission. Whether the mission 
is a base on the Moon or a manned mission to Mars, replacement 
parts cannot be stocked. They will need to be printed as they 
are needed. Any larger-scale structures on the surface of a 
Moon or a planet will require using native materials and 
reliable additive construction technologies.
    The role of advanced materials will also be increasingly 
important in the next generation of space systems design. 
Nanophase materials such as graphene have been studied for 
several decades, but are now emerging as useful technologies. 
Our Center for Graphene Research and Innovation designed a 
graphene-enhanced polymer material that just was launched this 
Saturday from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to be tested 
on the International Space Station for protection. It will 
spend about a year in space and is designed to protect against 
hyper-velocity impacts. So in a year, we will be able to bring 
that down and see how the experiment went. We and others are 
exploring graphene enhancements on many technologies relevant 
to NASA missions from microfiltration to high-efficiency solar 
panels. And let me be clear. Both graduate and undergraduate 
students play critical roles in all of these research 
experiments.
    Perhaps less obvious but an increasingly important skill 
set is around space activities are legal and regulatory issues. 
UM is home to the National Air and Space Law Center, along with 
the Journal for Space Law since 1973. As space activities in 
the private sector continually grow, appropriate light-touch 
legal frameworks need to be developed and studied to best 
inform decision-makers. UM is preparing this workforce with the 
first Air and Space Law Masters Program in the Nation.
    Let me take a moment to emphasize here, along with some 
others who have already spoken on it, the importance of the 
NASA Space Grant program. This program provides incredible 
space science and engineering research opportunities to 
graduate and undergraduate students from a wide swath of the 
country. I can tell you from personal experience that nothing 
can hook a young college student into a NASA career faster than 
working on a real-world problem with NASA engineers.
    I thank the Subcommittee for your attention and welcome 
questions when it is time.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Gladden follows:]

 Prepared Statement of J.R. (Josh) Gladden, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor for 
       Research, Professor of Physics, University of Mississippi
    Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, let me first thank 
you for the opportunity to provide my perspective on the role 
universities can and should play in the development of the Nation's 
STEM workforce to provide NASA with the engineers and scientists needed 
to keep accomplishing its mission into the next generation.
    My name is Josh Gladden and I have the privilege of serving as the 
Vice Chancellor for Research and Sponsored Programs and Professor of 
Physics at the University of Mississippi. Before this role, I served as 
the Director for the National Center for Physical Acoustics and Group 
Lead for the Materials Physics Lab at the NCPA.
    As with many technical objectives and challenges we will face in 
the next generation, the complexity of the missions at NASA will only 
increase. It is incumbent on higher education to prepare a workforce 
ready to meet these challenges.
    One critical element in preparing this unique workforce is the 
necessity that they are ingrained with a predilection and passion for 
life-long learning. Transformative technologies are no longer coming 
once in a generation--they are coming every decade. We have several 
programs and initiatives at the University of Mississippi to address 
these educational challenges.
    We have designed and are in the process of building a unique 
200,000 square foot STEM education facility. What makes this space 
unique is that it is designed from the ground up around collaboration 
across disciplines and active-learning teaching methods that focus on 
small-group project work and interactive technologies. These 
instruction methods have been shown to both improve comprehension of 
science and engineering principles and promote group problem-solving 
skills.
    Another unique program at UM is our Center for Manufacturing 
Excellence. All CME students major in engineering, business or 
accounting, but also share coursework across each of the three 
disciplines. CME students focus on group projects, communications 
skills and understanding a holistic view of a particular problem--from 
technical to financial aspects. We cannot predict the technologies 
these graduates will engage with during their careers, but we do know 
they will always need to work in teams and understand the bigger 
picture.
    Along with other universities in the nation, we are expanding our 
professional student options--students who are re-engaging with the 
university to update their skills while remaining on the job. These 
programs might range from a professional master's program with an 
accelerated time frame to a certificate program to get up to speed on 
an emerging technology. Another area we are looking to expand is what 
one might call ``deep collaboration'' where technical professionals 
from the government come spend extended time with research labs and 
groups at the university. Such programs are highly mutually beneficial 
to both the university researchers as well as the professional 
engineers. These sorts of programs I believe will be become 
increasingly important to our technical professional workforce.
    Universities also play a key role in developing and disseminating 
next-generation engineering principles. Lean engineering, design 
thinking, additive manufacturing and additive construction are 
important examples. Design thinking helps break down complex, 
multidimensional design problems into a manageable framework while lean 
engineering realizes those designs through highly efficient production 
and manufacturing. A challenge here, however, is not to sacrifice the 
technical foundations upon which all these concepts are built.
    Additive manufacturing and additive construction will play vital 
roles in any long-term space missions. Whether the mission is a base on 
the moon or a manned mission to Mars, replacements parts cannot be 
stocked--they will need to be printed as they are needed. Any larger-
scale structures on the surface of a moon or planet will require using 
native materials and reliable additive construction technologies.
    The role of advanced materials will also be increasingly important 
in the next generation of space systems design. Nanophase materials 
such as graphene have been studied for several decades, but are now 
emerging as useful technologies. Our Center for Graphene Research and 
Innovation designed a graphene-enhanced polymer material that was just 
launched this Saturday from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to be 
tested on the International Space Station for protection against hyper-
velocity impacts. We and others are exploring graphene enhancements of 
many technologies relevant to NASA missions--from microfiltration to 
high-efficiency solar panels. Let me be clear: Undergraduate and 
graduate students play a key role in the development of such 
technologies.
    Perhaps a less obvious, but increasingly important, skill set 
around space activities are legal and regulatory issues. UM is home to 
the National Center of Air and Space Law along with Journal of Space 
Law since 1973. As space activities in the private sector continually 
grow, appropriate light-touch legal frameworks need to be developed and 
studied to best inform decision makers. UM is preparing this workforce 
with the first Air and Space Law Masters Program in the Nation.
    Let me also take a moment to emphasize the importance of the NASA 
Space Grant program which provides incredible space science and 
engineering research opportunities to graduate and undergraduate 
students across a wide swath of the country. I can tell you from 
personal experience that nothing can hook a young college student into 
a NASA career faster than working with a team on a real-world problem.
    I thank the subcommittee for your attention and would welcome any 
questions.

    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    Ms. Condino.

  STATEMENT OF SHELLA RIVANO CONDINO, PHYSICS TEACHER, OAKTON 
                          HIGH SCHOOL

    Ms. Condino. First, I thank God for allowing me to be part 
of this STEM endeavor.
    Second, thanks to you all for giving me this opportunity 
today to share and give testimony about the impact of STEM 
engagement, especially to the underserved, under-represented 
minorities, women, and our rural communities.
    I have been a physics educator for 27 years. I hope it does 
not show the age.
    [Laughter.]
    Ms. Condino. And I have been an advocate of 
interdisciplinary and applied approach to learning even before 
I heard the acronym, STEM, in the late 1990s. I strongly 
believe in practical and experiential learning as I myself 
learn best by doing. Who does not enjoy hands-on and minds-on 
activities, or the adventure of putting theory into practice, 
or bringing knowledge to life, much more solving real-world 
problems? The power of this method of learning gives students a 
sense of responsibility, accountability, and ownership in their 
own learning.
    Every day before I start teaching, I always try reminding 
myself of this quote: tell me and I forget, teach me and I may 
remember, but involve me and I learn. Honestly, I have always 
wanted to tell my former teachers about that quote because then 
they will have a better understanding of what type of student I 
was when I was young, but I never got the chance or the courage 
to tell them anyway. So now as a teacher, this became my quote, 
a daily reminder, that as a teacher I need to create a learning 
environment that is transformative, engaging, fun, and where 
learning remains implicitly.
    Teaching in Presidio High School in Texas, which is a 
border town, rural geographically isolated like what you said--
to be exact, it is 251 miles away from El Paso, which is about 
4 hours away from the nearest Walmart, an economically 
disadvantaged school that is one of the highlights of my 
teaching career. I had my most meaningful and fulfilling 
experiences as an educator in that school district. It is the 
most challenging, yet it is the most rewarding. With more than 
60 percent of the students identified as English language 
learners, 95 percent Hispanic, 100 percent participating in the 
reduced--no, not even reduced--free lunch program, it truly 
challenged my creativity in teaching.
    Thus, what I did was use my passion for aviation and 
aerospace and began incorporating basic rocketry in my physics 
teaching. I also created a free summer enrichment program in 
rocketry and robotics to provide students activities that will 
make their minds engaged.
    This idea came to mind when I attended the first graduation 
I had in that school where there were four empty seats placed 
in remembrance of the four students who died due to drug-
related events, drag racing accidents, and even suicide. I felt 
the urgent need for my intervention, a sense of responsibility 
to this community by keeping these children away from bad 
elements such as drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy, and street 
racing.
    Hence, I founded the Presidio Rocketry and Robotics Club in 
2007 and created teams competing at The American Rocketry 
Challenge, or TARC, which is a STEM initiative and the world's 
largest model rocketry contest. The program grew. The 
membership started with three young girls and then it has grown 
to more than 30 students. With the support of my co-sponsor, 
Ms. Adelina Portillo, who is an ESL teacher, because I do not 
speak Spanish, and that was the hardest thing for me to do, to 
be able to teach to a group of kids where we do not have any 
communication that would be common for both of us, but we tried 
to do English. We tried. The administrators, the staff and 
teachers, the community of Presidio, even some of the companies 
that are outside of Presidio helped sponsor our program, and it 
became really popular amongst the middle school and high school 
students. Even our neighboring rural schools--they were 
encouraged and inspired to do the same initiative for their own 
students.
    Presidio gained national recognition because of its 
consistent placement in the top 100 teams in the Nation at the 
TARC contest in 2009 up to present. And in 2012, we got invited 
to the White House Science Fair, and our team presented their 
rockets to President Obama.
    Because we mostly finish in the top 25 in the national 
finals, Presidio teams got the chance to participate at the 
NASA Student Launch Initiative Project, which is an advanced, 
high-power rocketry program where students design, build, and 
launch rockets which carries scientific and engineering 
payloads. These aerospace STEM initiatives allowed our students 
to enhance their critical thinking, analytical and 
metacognition skills, conduct scientific research, improve 
their communication skills both oral and written, develop time 
management and organization, utilize technology through 
software and simulations, problem-solve and troubleshoot, and 
collaborate to make wise decisions. Through these programs, my 
students developed STEM skills and soft skills employers are 
looking for in the future workplace.
    Our students also became involved in the NASA Texas High 
School Aerospace Scholars program, Texas Alliance for 
Minorities in Engineering statewide contest, the Texas Tech 
STEM academic competition, even in botball robotics both in-
state and world championships, TCEA robotics, VEX robotics, 
even in the prestigious Zero Robotics Virtual Contest held at 
MIT. It sounds impossible to believe, but this is the records 
of what my students in Presidio has done.
    And, Dr. Manber, Presidio also participated in the Student 
Spaceflight Experiment Program, SSEP, mission to the ISS where 
we sent a microgravity flight experiment to the International 
Space Station on SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, 
and compared results or our own ground earth experimentations. 
This achievement is truly special because students collaborated 
and communicated with astronauts on board the ISS, and the 
community of Presidio developed awareness and exposure to STEM 
literacy.
    I know I left Presidio in 2014 and relocated here in 
northern Virginia. However, I continue to mentor the Presidio 
Rocketry team and communicate with them virtually through Skype 
every Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. Eastern time, after school. I 
review their rocket simulations and give them feedback on their 
designs. I also virtually demonstrate strategies and techniques 
on how to build stable and robust rockets.
    I currently teach AP physics courses at Oakton High School 
in Vienna, and I continued my goal of encouraging student 
participation and interest in STEM. I am one of the teacher 
sponsors of the Cougar Robotics, Rocketry, and Physics Clubs. 
Our rocketry team won first place at the Battle of the Rockets 
last year, became a national finalist at TARC, and currently we 
are working with NASA on our SLI project. Our robotics FRC team 
made it to the first Robotics World Finals in Detroit, Michigan 
last year. Last Monday, our physics club members participated 
at the STEM outreach program of the Association of Old Crows in 
the International Symposium and Convention on Electronic 
Warfare and we won the Cybersecurity Codebreaking Challenge. 
Last Friday, I took my students to the Project Aviation Career 
Education and Expo in Leesburg, Virginia, and we bagged $22,500 
worth of scholarships on flight trainings.
    [Applause.]
    Ms. Condino. Thank you.
    Because of my experiences in teaching in the third poorest 
school district in the State of Texas and right now in one of 
the richest counties in the entire country, I became more 
certain. I am more determined and passionate about contributing 
to the future workforce. This is my way of giving back to this 
country. I hope that you too will continue to invest in our 
youth's education for it will surely guarantee great returns.
    Thank you very much and may God continue to bless us all 
and God bless the United States of America.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Condino follows:]

     Prepared Statement of Shella Rivano Condino, Physics Teacher, 
                           Oakton High School
    First, I thank God for allowing me to be part of this STEM 
endeavor. Second, thanks to all of you for giving me this opportunity 
today to share and give my testimony about the impact of STEM 
Engagement especially to the underrepresented, minorities, and rural 
communities.
    I have been a physics educator for 27 years, and I have been an 
advocate of interdisciplinary and applied approach to learning even 
before I've heard of the acronym STEM in the late 1990s. I strongly 
believe in practical and experiential learning, as I myself learn best 
BY DOING. Who does not enjoy hands-on and minds-on activities? or the 
adventure of putting theory into practice? or bringing knowledge to 
life? much more solving real-world problems? The power of this method 
of learning gives students a sense of responsibility, accountability 
and ownership in their own learning.
    Everyday before I start teaching, I always try reminding myself of 
this quote: Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve 
me and I learn. Honestly, I've always wanted to tell my former teachers 
about this quote so that they can understand me better when I was a 
student, but I never got the courage to tell them anyway. So now, this 
quote has become my daily reminder that as a teacher I need to create a 
learning environment that is transformative, engaging, fun and where 
learning remains implicitly.
    Teaching in Presidio High School in Presidio, Texas, a border town, 
rural, geographically isolated and economically disadvantage school, is 
one of the highlights of my teaching career. I've had my most 
meaningful and fulfilling experiences as an educator in that school 
district. The most challenging, yet the most rewarding. With more than 
60 percent of the students identified as English Language Learners, it 
truly challenged my creativity in teaching. I used my passion for 
aviation and aerospace and began incorporating basic rocketry in my 
physics teaching. I also created a free summer enrichment program in 
rocketry and robotics to provide students activities that will make 
their minds engaged. This idea came to mind when I attended a 
graduation one year, where 4 empty seats were placed in remembrance of 
the 4 students who died due to drug related events, drag racing 
accident and suicide. I felt the urgent need for intervention, a sense 
of responsibility to the community by keeping these children away from 
bad elements such drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy, and street racing. 
Hence, I founded the Presidio Rocketry and Robotics Club in 2007 and 
created teams competing at The American Rocketry Challenge, a STEM 
initiative, the world's largest model rocketry competition. The program 
grew membership starting from 3 young girls to more than 30 students! 
With the support of my co-sponsor Ms. Adelina Portillo, the 
administrators, staff and teachers, community of Presidio and companies 
who helped sponsor our program it became popular amongst high school 
and middle school students. Neighboring rural schools were encouraged 
and inspired to do the same initiative for their students. Also, 
Presidio rocketry gained national recognition due to its consistent 
placement in the top 100 in the Nation at TARC since 2009 to present! 
In 2012, we got invited to the Whitehouse Science Fair and our team 
presented their rockets to former President Obama. Because we mostly 
finished in the top 25 in the national finals, Presidio team got the 
chance to participate at the NASA Student Launch Initiative project, an 
advanced-high-power rocketry program where students design, build, and 
launch a rocket which carries scientific or engineering payloads. These 
aerospace STEM initiatives allowed our students to enhance their 
critical thinking, analytical and metacognition skills; conduct 
scientific research, improve their communication skills both oral and 
written, develop time management and organization, utilize technology 
through software and simulations, problem-solve and trouble shoot, and 
collaborate to make wise decisions. Through these programs, my students 
developed STEM skills and soft skills employers are looking for in the 
future workplace.
    Our students also became involved in the NASA Texas High School 
Aerospace Scholars program, Texas Alliance for Minorities in 
Engineering STEM Statewide contest, Texas Tech T-STEM academic 
competition, Botball Robotics in state and world championships, TCEA 
Robotics, VEX Robotics, even in the prestigious Zero Robotics Virtual 
Contest held at MIT! Presidio also participated in the Student 
Spaceflight Experiments Program SSEP Mission 2 to the ISS, where we 
sent a microgravity flight experiment to the International Space 
Station on SpaceX-1 (Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft) and 
compared results of our own ground Earth experimentation. This 
achievement is truly special because students collaborated and 
communicated with the astronauts onboard the ISS, and the community of 
Presidio developed an awareness and exposure to STEM literacy!
    I left Presidio HS in 2014 and relocated in northern VA. However, I 
continue to mentor the Presidio Rocketry team and communicate with them 
virtually through Skype every Friday from 3-5 pm Eastern time. I review 
their rocket simulations and give them feedback on their designs. I 
also virtually demonstrate strategies and techniques on how to build 
stable and robust rocket.
    I currently teach AP Physics courses at Oakton High School in 
Vienna, VA. I continued my goal of encouraging student participation 
and interest in STEM. I am one of the teacher sponsors of the Cougar 
Robotics, Rocketry and Physics Clubs. Our rocketry team won first place 
at the Battle of the Rockets this year, became national finalist at 
TARC, and currently working with NASA SLI project. Our robotics FRC 
team made it to the FIRST Robotics World Finals in Detroit, Michigan 
last year. Last Monday our physics club members participated at the 
STEM outreach program of the Association of Old Crows in the 
International Symposium and Convention on Electronic Warfare and won 
the Cybersecurity Codebreaking Challenge. Last Friday, I took my 
students to the Projet Aviation Career Education and EXPO in Leesburg, 
VA and bagged $22500 worth of scholarship on flight trainings.
    Because of my experiences in teaching in the 3rd poorest school 
district in the State of Texas and in the one of the richest counties 
in the entire country, I became more certain, determine and passionate 
about contributing to the future workforce. This is my way of giving 
back to this country. I hope that you too will continue to invest in 
our youth's education for it will surely guarantee great returns. Thank 
you very much and may God continue to bless us all and this great 
country. God bless the United States of America!
    Here is a list of a few students who became part of the STEM 
programs and their current STEM related careers.

   1.  Ana Nieto--mechanical engineer, Aurora Flight Sciences, a 
        subsidiary of Boeing Company in Manassas, VA

   2.  Itza Rodriguez--structural design engineer, The Boeing Company 
        in Seattle, WA

   3.  Antonio Bujanda--mechanical engineer, assistant professor at 
        Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX

   4.  Janet Nieto--chemist at Reliable Analysis in Michigan

   5.  Daniella Barraza--environmental scientist, Bureau of Land 
        Management in Las Cruces, NM

   6.  Aida and Ana Luevanos--directors, Alumni Relations at Sul Ross 
        University in Alpine, Texas

   7.  Taylor Galliete--mechanical engineer, Sandia National 
        Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM

   8.  Helena Cardona--architect, CAS Architects in Mountainview, CA

   9.  Miguel Nieto--Legislative Assistant, Texas State Capitol House 
        of Representatives in Austin, TX

  10.  Mextli Delgado--mathematics teacher in Odessa, TX

  11.  Tatum Galliete--film, Warner Brothers in Los Angeles, CA

  12.  Roxanne Hernandez--business analyst, Select Energy Services in 
        Austin, TX

  13.  Matthew LaRosa--physicist, Lockheed Martin Corp Missile Division 
        in Orlando, FL

    Senator Cruz. Thank you very much, Ms. Condino, for that 
very powerful testimony. And let me say to each of you, thank 
you for your testimony. That was illuminating. That was 
important and particularly for those of you who are or have 
been educators, thank you for the time you have spent helping 
inspire, helping shape the next generation of scientists and 
innovators and leaders.
    Ms. Condino, let me say as well, you are Skyping every week 
with the students in Presidio High School, and if you would, 
please convey for me to the students at the Presidio Rocketry 
Club how proud we are of the hard work they are doing.
    And in fact, one story that I wanted to ask you to 
elaborate on is a story that a spokesman for the Aerospace 
Industry Association recounted in a ``Texas Monthly'' article, 
which is that the Presidio team, in order to be able to afford 
their first trip to Virginia for the Team America Rocketry 
Challenge had to auction off a goat. And according to the 
article, your team auctioned off a goat in Presidio every year 
for the next 5 years. And in 2014, the team placed its highest 
ranking yet, fourth place at the competition. Could you 
elaborate on that please?
    Ms. Condino. Like what I said, it is an economically 
disadvantaged school, and so we do not have much of a budget. 
But it is very difficult to convince the school board to allow 
us to go outside of Presidio. So what I decided was, together 
with the teacher that I worked with, you know, my co-sponsor, 
we have to raise funds in order for us to show that we wanted 
these kids to move forward.
    And one of the initiatives that we did was a suggestion 
from a parent to auction a goat because at that time when we 
tried to compete in the TARC, and we made it to the top 100, we 
have to fly out of Texas. But we have to go to the airport 4 
hours away first. It was the transportation that was the most 
difficult and then the budget on how to build the rockets as 
well.
    So I always tell the kids we cannot waste money. We cannot 
waste time. We have to do everything through simulation first, 
and through that simulation, build from scratch. And we decided 
let us show to the school board that we are willing to put in 
time and effort.
    There were a group of companies, particularly Lockheed 
Martin Corporation, because at that time when we learned that 
we made it to the national finals, we were already told we are 
not moving on because we do not have the budget, there is 
liability, and all of those things. But when I mentioned it to 
Mr. Steve DeLeon, who used to work at Lockheed Martin at that 
time, he felt like he wanted to help. And so he was able to 
gather about $3,000, and he told me put pressure to your board 
and tell them we are willing to support this initiative. And so 
we went.
    But we have to do it every year. We cannot just rely on 
other people's money every single time. We have to show them 
that we also are putting in some of our efforts. And yes, we 
first raffled the goats. In that particular area, goat is a 
common thing to eat. So they would pay money in order to eat 
the goat. But there are winners where they do not want the 
goat. So I auctioned it. After I raffle, we auction it at night 
because we have this arts festival. And with one little goat, 
we could make $2,000. But it is all about hard work. It is 
about your initiative. We sell donuts. I burned my fingers by 
barbecuing in front of church every Sunday because I wanted to 
show the community that we are not just traveling out of town 
for pleasure. We wanted to compete and bring back that glory to 
that little town of Presidio.
    Senator Cruz. Well, thank you for your creativity and your 
passion, and perhaps in honor of that story at our next 
subcommittee hearing we may have to serve cabrito tacos.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. Mr. Manber, you mentioned in your testimony 
that Nanoracks and DreamUp have flown roughly 60 educational 
payloads to the ISS from Texas schools in Hawkins and Houston, 
Burleson, El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Buda. What is the 
impact on those schools of being able to participate? And how 
can we expand it so that more schools have that opportunity?
    Mr. Manber. Well, I think Ms. Condino has just told us the 
impact. It is incredible the impact. We have students coming to 
us now who are asking us for help on their thesis, their 
university thesis, Ph.D. thesis. They started with us 5, 6, 7 
years ago. Teachers tell us every week that the students never 
forget participating in a project that actually goes to space. 
And so with a great deal of humbleness, we see how many lives 
that we have changed, having these students decide to go into 
STEM and go into engineering or biology because of space. So it 
has had an extraordinary impact on the lives of the students 
and the teachers and the parents when they see that this is 
something real and something that can be done within an 
academic year or almost an academic year.
    You ask an excellent question, how do we expand it? We are 
sometimes that awful thing of a business, and we are investing. 
We are investing to expand to reach out to the disadvantaged. 
We have to reach out to more communities. We are working with--
--
    Senator Cruz. What does it cost for a school to----
    Mr. Manber. OK. The smallest price we have is $15,000 U.S. 
for a month on the Space Station. And so it is test tubes. And 
I will be honest with you. I do not mean to do this here at a 
hearing, but we do not make money on that. I mean, we also work 
with NASA and the German Space Agency and others. And on this 
educational at $15,000 you can do a test tube that goes up.
    Senator Cruz. Let me repeat that for anyone at C-SPAN 
watching. You are saying any school in America----
    Mr. Manber. Yes, $15,000 will put you up for 30 days on the 
station.
    Senator Cruz. Wow.
    Mr. Manber. And we have lists of all of the payloads that 
have flown previously. So you can see the research that has 
been done. We work with partners like Dr. Goldstein who can 
provide a curriculum. DreamUp has a curriculum. And we are 
expanding. That program is growing rapidly. It is also growing, 
as I said, into more disadvantaged locations.
    We still have trouble with NASA. We have trouble because we 
do not quite fit, but we are picking up the first of our NASA 
funding for disadvantaged communities.
    And we are also going overseas now. And I think it is a 
great story in American leadership. Both DreamUp and 
Nanoracks--we have done work with the UAE on contests and in 
Germany. And so this is a great story of all working together, 
the students, the community, NASA, and the private sector. So 
it is a good story.
    Senator Cruz. So $15,000. If I am doing my math right, that 
is about seven and a half goats.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. And you may think of an alternative price.
    Mr. Manber. Well, I can think of alternative things we 
could auction off in Texas.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. Senator Capito.

            STATEMENT OF HON. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, 
                U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA

    Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of 
you for being here today.
    I am from West Virginia and we have a great relationship 
with NASA in West Virginia. We have the Katherine Johnson IV&V 
Center that we just renamed in her honor, our proud West 
Virginian.
    I would like to ask really anybody on the panel. But in my 
observations there, I think one of the most enlightening thing 
that I have seen and really I think the way to get our students 
is the collaborative efforts they do with Fairmont and also 
with West Virginia University.
    So how do you see that expanding? I do not know. Dr. 
Gladden, you might be more involved with that at your school. 
How do you see that expanding and is there any pushback from 
NASA to continue those kinds of internships and availabilities? 
Because a lot of them end up working there in the end.
    Dr. Gladden. Well, thank you for the question.
    I certainly do not see any pushback from NASA. I think that 
NASA has been a very good partner too with the higher ed 
community providing those internships, those opportunities for 
our students, and also as we have talked about before, the 
research projects. Students are always involved in every 
research project. And so those are golden opportunities for 
those students to get involved in a real project of interest to 
NASA but also to engage with the professionals at NASA. And 
that engagement, even over and above the technical parts, is 
really quite valuable.
    So, no, I certainly do not see any pushback. And I think 
that all of us in higher ed are always looking for more and 
more experiential opportunities for our students.
    Senator Capito. So that would be like the Space Grant 
program.
    Dr. Gladden. Exactly. Yes, Space Grant is a great example 
of a vehicle to make those sorts of things happen.
    Senator Capito. Ms. Condino, you talked about your robotics 
team. Another observation I have had--I have seen a lot of 
robotics teams. We live in a rural State. And one of the things 
that I have noticed that I think is kind of lost on people when 
they think about the STEM education that comes from being a 
part of a robotics team, whether it is an elementary, middle 
school, or high school, but the skill sets that you are 
developing are not just your science and technology skill sets. 
You are learning how to present. You are learning how to work 
collaboratively. You are learning how to share knowledge with 
other teams from other States or other schools. And I think 
that part of the robotics team, for that person that may not 
have the highest technological skills or maybe cannot work the 
controllers as well as somebody else, to have a member and the 
concept of teamwork is something that I think is incredibly 
important and certainly NASA is a team.
    So how do you see that with your experience as a teacher?
    Ms. Condino. In our robotics program, we divide our group 
into subcommittees or committees, you know, little committees. 
We actually right now we even have the business committee, the 
marketing group. We have kids that are involved in just 
documentation alone, even the scouting group because they have 
to pair up with some other schools. So it is important for them 
to have good relationships with the opponents so that in the 
end, if you do not actually make it to the top finals, the top 
teams will get the chance to select you. So having good 
relationships with them.
    So it is not at all just the build skill or the coding 
skill and the programming skill. It is all types of skills that 
actually is being honed and enhanced in these kinds of 
programs.
    Senator Capito. And I think that really fleshes it out.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton, it is great that Senator Rosen is here 
with me today. I joke that we are the STEM times two because we 
just recently got a bill passed, the Building Blocks of STEM 
Act. Part of our mission has been to draw in more women into 
STEM at a younger age.
    What is your experience with this, and how do you think we 
can increase the participation not just of women but other 
minority groups that are not well represented in the STEM 
fields?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Thank you for this question. This is 
something I am so passionate about and I think about deeply. 
And anyone who is listening, I want to work with you on this. I 
think it is for anyone who feels that their voice cannot be 
heard either because of their gender or their socioeconomic 
background or their race or any of the reasons there could be 
implicit bias against a person.
    And to me the really key step in advancing equity is 
culture. I think that you need a culture of the organization 
where people can rise on their merits, where they are not 
bullied out, where they are not harassed out. Sociologists say 
that until there are about 30 percent of people who you feel 
like are like you on the team, you feel like you are alone, and 
therefore you are the most vulnerable person. It does not 
matter what the hiring rubric is. If you do not have a good 
culture, you will not have diversity.
    And I would just add to that also the experiential 
learning, the inquiry learning of things that we are working 
on--you can create any kind of miracle with one fabulous 
teacher and 30 kids or with a perfect internship. But if we 
cannot do this at scale, we have lost. We need to be able to do 
this at scale.
    And so that is the purpose of so much of what I have been 
working on personally, trying to make sure that these 
experiential inquiry experiences can be done at scale. I think 
it is critical to equity and diversity as well.
    Thank you.
    Senator Capito. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    Senator Rosen.

                STATEMENT OF HON. JACKY ROSEN, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM NEVADA

    Senator Rosen. Thank you.
    Well, I have to tell you that all of you are so inspiring. 
And oh, my goodness, I can tell you I have so many friends who 
are teachers that find the creative ways to inspire their 
students through music, through physics, through all kinds of 
things. And it is the art and passion of teaching that will 
really move our country forward because when you grab those 
young minds--you have grabbed me. I am like ready take your 
class. And there you go. So thank you, and all of your passion 
is infectious. You need to go around the country talking about 
this.
    And Senator Capito and I did introduce a bill, Building 
Blocks of STEM to help get young girls, pre-K through 12, 
involved in STEM education. It should hopefully be passing the 
House and the President will sign that into law. We will get 
some things moving.
    But we do, in Nevada, have a wonderful woman, Dr. Elisabeth 
Hausrath, who is a research geoscience professor at UNLV. So 
she got the bug early. And so we know that currently half the 
states in the United States, including Nevada, only receive 
less than 10 percent of Federal R&D funding. The NASA EPSCoR is 
a joint Federal/State program designed to allow more states to 
participate in space and aeronautics research, building upon 
what the kids learn in the younger grades.
    So we received $100,000 at UNLV to study minerals found on 
Mars. Like I said, geoscience professor, Dr. Elisabeth 
Hausrath--she is a role model for so many. We have been 
featuring her. She is leading this research project and she was 
selected by NASA as one of 10 scientists who is going to choose 
which rock and soil samples from Mars that are going to be 
brought back to Earth.
    So the President's budget proposal--it terminates this 
NASA's office of STEM engagement and significantly is going to 
cut NASA EPSCoR. So we are going to do Building Blocks of STEM. 
We are going to try to provide grants and help for teachers and 
schools and bring this up to scale, we hope, around the 
country. But what do we do if we terminate this project? Where 
do we go from here?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. One very practical thing I might say, as 
the PI of the mission, Psyche--and by the way, speaking of 
gender, I believe I am the second woman to ever win a competed 
deep space mission. I really feel strongly about that.
    Senator Rosen. Congratulations.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. And the first was Maria Zuber, who I am 
sure many of us in this room know, my friend and mentor.
    We are allowed to take a percentage of our PI-led mission 
money and use it for undergraduate education and outreach. And 
so that was something that I mentioned in my testimony. But 
that could be expanded beyond the undergraduate. If the 
missions could also then reach K through 12, could reach out to 
communities with that money. If that money was just allowed to 
be used in a broader sense, that would immediately be perhaps a 
simple way that we could help with the potential tightening of 
the NASA budget.
    Senator Rosen. So maybe offering internships and 
scholarships for people who are going to graduate school or 
undergraduate, that they can come down and help teachers like 
this do some great things in their classroom, give them those 
extra skills.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. That is exactly right. You know, our 550 
undergraduates we have had involved in two years--that could 
have been 550 undergraduates and 550 high school students or 
middle school students. That would begin to make a difference.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you.
    And so I guess what I want to ask each one of you in all 
the different areas that you work in, how can we here in 
Congress help you get the next generation inspired to reach for 
the stars, if you will? Right? Because that is what NASA is all 
about. And thinking about that, using that imagination. So we 
are the policymakers. We are the lawmakers. You cannot 
legislate everything, but what can we do to help you inspire 
that next gen? Please.
    Mr. Manber. Thank you for your enthusiasm, Senator.
    Senator Rosen. I am a former computer programmer. I like 
the STEM stuff.
    Mr. Manber. We have found at both Nanoracks and DreamUp 
that first off, NASA opens doors. I have unfortunate news that 
not all of the American public likes all of the American 
government. OK. This is news for you. But NASA still opens 
doors, and NASA must be there. It is a wonderful brand. It is a 
wonderful history. And no matter where we are when we say we 
are working with NASA to go to the International Space Station, 
people smile. I mean, there is just this trust of what NASA has 
been, is, and will be.
    So what I would say from your vantage point is I do not 
want to see NASA go away in STEM. I mean, so many governmental 
organizations have STEM outreaches, which is wonderful. But 
NASA is a special part of our government, and they have such a 
proud history.
    So we have found that contests inspire when it is something 
real of going to space. This is just from our vantage point.
    Senator Rosen. I watched the moon landing, and so I know 
what it inspires.
    Mr. Manber. When a student can be part of something that 
involves a launch of a rocket or whatever, a satellite, or 
whatever it is, that is inspiring, and we need that the history 
of NASA to be there to continue to make them motivated.
    Senator Rosen. Please, yes.
    Dr. Gladden. So I just want to tee off of that because I 
think that is really truly important. You know, NASA is 
uniquely positioned of really any Federal agency to capture 
hearts and minds of students at a very young age. And I think 
this also connects back to the gender gap discussion we were 
having a few minutes ago that even before the students get to 
Ms. Condino, reaching back into the middle school, that is 
where you begin to see some differentiation happening based on 
gender. And I think trying to reach back into the middle school 
or even elementary school through NASA and the allure of NASA, 
that might be a powerful thing for our country.
    Senator Rosen. Ms. Condino, what do you think?
    Ms. Condino. From a teacher's standpoint, I think it is 
reduction of all of those tests, and instead of focusing so 
much in the classroom and teaching to the test because it is 
mandated by the State or the government, why not allow us 
teachers to create all of those STEM initiatives and projects 
and have the kids put their minds and participating and doing 
activities that are like that?
    Senator Rosen. Experience-based learning. I like it. Thank 
you.
    I yield back.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you.
    Senator Thune.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE, 
                 U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

    Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As the demand for jobs in STEM fields continues to grow, it 
is critical that we have students from all over the country who 
have those skills and are competitive on graduation regardless 
of where they choose to receive their education.
    NASA's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive 
Research, or EPSCoR, provided, as you know, funding to areas of 
the country that are typically unrepresented in Federal space 
and aeronautics research funding. South Dakota's universities 
continue to produce high quality students in STEM fields, and 
EPSCOR funding has been essential in making a broader base of 
STEM expertise available to NASA.
    So could you just, as a general question, sort of speak to 
the importance of building a nationwide STEM workforce that 
draws from every state across the country?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Thank you for that question.
    I see the effects of the tightening our STEM workforce 
every day working on this mission. I see it at Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory. It see it at Maxar, our industry partners. Everyone 
is feeling it. It is a real problem on the ground right now, 
which I imagine Mr. Manber can relate to.
    So to me showing students early that you are not a special 
kind of person if you go into STEM, that anyone who is 
interested can do it. There is not this differentiator between 
the STEM people and the non-STEM people. You can love art and 
you can love philosophy and you can love sports and you can 
also love math. And you can work with people who love all those 
things.
    If we could make it more of a connector instead of 
necessarily a differentiator, if we could work on the culture 
of not judging girls in fifth grade and telling them they are 
not good at math, work on that culture, give the teachers the 
freedom to connect not just STEM, but all the fields together, 
to me that would be a great impetus for bringing people into 
this world of STEM.
    Mr. Manber. In Houston, we just hired our first in-company 
recruiter, and we have done it because we are having trouble 
filling jobs. We are very, very hungry to find the right level 
of young engineers that have space experience, and we have 
picked up some new programs lately. And my head of engineering 
is frantically, you know, where do we find the people? This is 
a serious problem for us, and in the space community, we cannot 
do non-U.S. citizens. We cannot do the visas. So we have a 
problem in this country today. We are growing 30 to 40 percent 
a year, and I am worried about getting the right people. I am 
just having trouble with it.
    Dr. Gladden. So I think all of that is exactly right.
    I might touch on one element of that question that I think 
was in your question, Senator Thune, about the demographic 
diversity across the country, so making sure we are drawing 
engineering talent not just from the East Coast and the West 
Coast but all through the country. And I do think that is 
critically important because we are culturally different. We 
have different experiences as young children. And so that 
little girl who grew up fixing her tractor on her farm could 
make an amazing engineer, but she has got to have the 
opportunity to see that path forward.
    And so I think that is where programs like NASA EPSCoR and 
others can be so invaluable to making sure that all of those 
students in South Dakota and Mississippi and everywhere in 
between can see that path forward because there is talent out 
there. It is not that we do not have the talent. I think we 
have a pipeline problem.
    Senator Thune. Ms. Condino, you mentioned in your testimony 
some of your experience teaching in a rural community in Texas. 
And I am curious. We obviously work very hard in South Dakota. 
We have got some exceptional students, and that is thanks to 
the dedication of the faculty and the administrators and State 
officials who work very hard to make sure that they have to 
tools they need. But one of the challenges that we face is 
recruiting teachers and retaining STEM teachers.
    And I am just wondering, based on your experience in Texas, 
if you could share any ideas that might help schools in South 
Dakota and other rural states recruit and retain teachers who 
are equipped to teach STEM-related courses.
    Ms. Condino. I remember moving from teaching in El Paso to 
Presidio, Texas where my salary was cut more than $10,000. But 
I think that is one thing that would attract teachers in those 
rural areas because there are gems in the rural areas. The kids 
could do much because they have nothing to lose. And that is 
one thing that I have noticed. If I would present the students 
something that is new to them, they will grab it in a 
heartbeat. They will do whatever I want.
    But it is very difficult to keep the teachers because one 
would be either pay scale, obviously, and the lack of proper 
training. I am very resourceful in my own way. I tried to use 
technology and all the other resources inside and outside, and 
that is what I promise my students every day that if I cannot 
get the resource from right here, I will bring it to you.
    Like for career day, I remember how every year we have a 
career day in November. But the first career day I attended in 
Presidio, we only had plumbers. And I have nothing against 
those kinds of jobs, plumbers and people who work in the salon. 
The most popular were the border patrol and the military. But I 
felt like these kids have to be exposed. So I told the teachers 
and administrators, hey, I want to do a virtual career so that 
I could have people from the outside, professors in the 
universities from the outside that I know, and even those in 
other countries, former students of mine are already in--that 
are professional, have the kids get exposed to that.
    Answering what you asked about keeping the teachers, it is 
the individual. I can only speak for myself. It does not matter 
where I go. It does not matter how much I get paid for 
teaching. This is my passion. And so I will just give 100 
percent of what I have. And I really hope that those other 
teachers would stay in that teaching profession because we are 
losing the majority of them.
    But I am proud to tell you that Presidio High School or 
even the elementary has now faculty members that were my former 
students. So they are going back. And that is what I told the 
students. When you leave Presidio, you have to come back and 
help your community to flourish.
    Senator Thune. You have to be able to handle the 40 below 
wind chills in South Dakota too on top of it.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Thune. But I just want one last question, if I can, 
Mr. Chairman.
    In addition to the achievements of NASA and its partners, 
maintaining American leadership in space is also going to 
depend on continuing improvements in our cybersecurity 
capabilities. We have a little university in South Dakota, 
Dakota State University, which has been a real leader in 
training qualified cybersecurity professionals.
    How important are sophisticated cybersecurity capabilities 
and a large network of cybersecurity professionals to 
maintaining American scientific and technological leadership in 
space, would you say?
    Mr. Manber. Thank you for the question, Senator.
    Growing up in our software capabilities and cybersecurity, 
we are spending more and more money, and we think it is well 
spent on protecting our internal and external communications. 
It is something none of us here know the moment it is going to 
be a crisis or whether it will be a crisis, but it is a threat. 
And so even a small company like mine is investing more and 
more to ensure confidentiality and security in our 
communication systems. We are hit all the time. We are hit all, 
all the time.
    Dr. Gladden. Ditto for universities.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Just to add briefly onto that, the team 
of people working on the Psyche mission is now above 800. We 
are at so many different organizations. The openings for cyber-
attacks through those many, many organizations is vast, and for 
a project like this, the catastrophe could only be imagined. 
And so it is beyond critical to add to everything that is said 
at the table.
    Senator Thune. I am glad to hear that Dakota State is very 
much on the right track I think. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you, Senator Thune.
    Mr. Manber, you spoke compellingly about the challenge of 
finding qualified employees who are trained engineers and able 
to fill the demands of the modern workforce.
    A question I want to ask all four of the panel members, in 
your opinion, how important is space? How important is the 
mission?
    You know, I think back to when John F. Kennedy came to 
Houston and came to Rice University and laid out a vision that 
within a decade, we will take a man to the Moon and bring him 
home. And I have always liked the fact that President Kennedy 
said at the time--he was at Rice, and he said why does Rice 
play Texas. Not because it is easy. Because it is hard.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. That inspired a whole generation.
    My question to you is how important is space for inspiring 
a new generation of students, a new generation of teachers? How 
important is going back to the moon? How important is building 
a sustainable habitat for ongoing research on the Moon? How 
important is going to Mars and perhaps finding the first signs 
of life in the universe? How important is that for inspiring 
the next Nobel laureate in physics? Share the importance of 
space for inspiration.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. In our world today, a lot of the 
narratives we hear are narratives of fear and narratives of 
guilt. But the only way you really get people to stand up and 
do the miracles that we are capable of is when you have a 
narrative of optimism and a narrative of hope.
    And that is what space is. Space is the opportunity to be 
who we could be as human kind, that we do not always see 
ourselves being every day here. It is the inspiration that if 
we can create these things that you are listing, these 
beautiful ideas we have, then we can be bolder and better in 
our lives here at home. It is the inspiration for students to 
go into STEM fields for something that they find could make 
them a bigger and a better human being.
    And so I think it is incumbent upon us. If we turn away, it 
is a failure of our species. We have to do this.
    Mr. Manber. We just opened an office in the UAE in Abu 
Dhabi, and we have been doing work on the Emirates astronaut 
who went to the Space Station. We did their educational 
payloads, which is pretty cool.
    Why are they looking at space, and why did we open an 
office in Abu Dhabi? It is funny how we take things for granted 
in this country and we do not realize. They have studied the 
last 50-100 years, and they said the best way to ensure that we 
as a society in the UAE stay together as the oil revenue goes 
down is to get into space. And to them, they have announced a 
100-year program to go to Mars. And so they have looked and 
studied us, and they said what you did during this Apollo era 
and what you continue to do in space is the best way that we as 
a government can inspire our kids not to leave our country and 
to get meaningful jobs.
    The same in Australia. The same in Mexico. The same in the 
UK. All have opened space programs in the last 2 to 3 years, 
all looking to the United States as the role model.
    And here we do not even see it. Here we have to be reminded 
only when someone gets in front of us for a brief period of 
time. And it just frustrates me that we see every day how kids 
are encouraged by and motivated by space, and of course, there 
are strategic advantages, commercial advantages.
    But to answer the question, the world has looked around and 
said, you know, what you guys did during Apollo, hey, that is 
the best way to motivate our next generation. So space is 
important for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of them we know 
already. It inspires.
    Dr. Gladden. That was all very well said.
    The only thing I would add to that I think is that if you 
just look from a straight up return on investment, direct 
return on investment, it is probably not a great thing to do. 
But the intangible power of the space exploration is--it is 
intangible. It is immeasurable. I do not think I can pinpoint 
any single initiative or program in this country's history that 
we could all collectively be more proud of and more inspired by 
than the Apollo program. I mean, it really kind of took this 
country to a whole different level. And the inspiration that it 
delivered to the country then got leveraged into all kinds of 
other technical advances. So that is when you sort of look at 
our return on investment, you got to pull all that into it as 
well. So I think that the power of space exploration--it goes 
way beyond just the direct dollars and return.
    Ms. Condino. I think it is a reminder that we really are 
not alone, and we have to go out there. Either to protect 
ourselves in the future, and explore what is beyond and how can 
we use that to make our planet even better. So it is a 
testimony where this is where we could put all the skills that 
we have developed. Why is it not inspiring to be able to be the 
first person on Mars? I myself wanted to travel and go to 
space. That is my lifelong dream.
    Senator Cruz. You know, one of the things we have heard as 
well is the enormous demands in the STEM fields and that these 
are only going to keep growing, whether cybersecurity, whether 
space, whether computers, whether programming. The world is 
getting more and more complicated, more and more technological, 
and people lacking those STEM skills have a much higher chance 
of being locked out of their best chances of the future.
    At the same time, we are facing a shortage of graduates 
with the skills necessary, and one of the things that all of 
you all have testified to is to address that, we have got to 
expand the pool. We have got to expand the graduates who are 
coming out. And in particular, minorities, African Americans, 
and Hispanics continue to be under-represented in STEM fields, 
and women continue to be under-represented in STEM fields.
    Both of those are realities I personally have considerable 
familiarity with. My mom was one of those human computers. She 
came out of Rice in 1956 and got hired at Shell as a computer 
programmer at the dawn of the computer age. And my dad was a 
Cuban immigrant who came out of Texas in 1961 and became a 
computer programmer at IBM with a heavy Spanish accent and an 
amazed wonder to be in America.
    I want to ask each of you, how do we expand the ability of 
minorities, the ability of women to see that they can achieve 
in the STEM fields, to gain the skills they need, and to get 
the tools to pursue careers if that is their passion and their 
aptitude and their dreams? And I want to open it up to anyone.
    Ms. Condino. Well, especially the women, when I used to 
teach in Presidio, it was very difficult at the beginning to 
kind of like to have them speak up for themselves. So I always 
tell the kids self-advocacy is very, very important. And I ask 
your teacher will be here as your second mom. And after they 
have already gained all the skills and those exposures that we 
provided for them, they need that full support in the end as 
well until they continue.
    Like these young girls that I mentored all the way until 
they finally called me and said, Mrs. Condino, my last question 
for you is help me decide. Should I accept a job at Lockheed 
Martin Corporation or should I go to Aurora Flight Sciences, 
which is owned by Boeing. Things like that.
    So it's continuing to mentor these kids whether they are 
male or female and continuing to provide them that exposure. I 
am very happy where I am at right now at Fairfax County public 
schools because especially in my school, they were pioneering 
these capstone projects where in lieu of having this final 
exam, these kids are developing projects from ninth grade all 
the way to senior. And the capstone projects are amazing where 
they conduct research.
    They do presentations at--you know, even at the Department 
of Education, we have students who published a book. There is a 
student who actually created a story about her struggle and her 
way to the United States I believe from Siberia and it ended up 
being a film. So she was invited to this film festival. So 
things like that is already starting. And again, it is 
experiential learning.
    And we are now moving on to the middle school where the 
middle schools are also sort of like being exposed at a young 
age because these are the skills that we will need for our 
future workforce. And I think we have to start really early. 
And as a teacher, we need to be there and continue our 
mentorship. Even if they are already graduates, we still 
continue to communicate with them.
    On Thanksgiving, one of my former students at Herndon High 
School just graduated with a degree in physics, and he is now 
working at the Missile Division of Lockheed Martin. And he has 
told me I am coming home on Thanksgiving, and I want to buy you 
dinner. So things like that where you just give everything that 
you have because it is not just for me anymore. It is not about 
me anymore. It is about my kids, the future of my children and 
their children's children. And I wanted to be able to 
contribute now.
    Senator Cruz. And the choice you described your former 
student is facing, I would like to see a lot more students 
having choices like that.
    Dr. Gladden. I will be brief. I think the only extra point 
I would add to that is, as I stated earlier, reaching further 
back into the grade levels, if we are thinking about trying to 
grow, which absolutely we need to do, grow the under-
represented groups within the STEM fields, the professional 
ranks, I do think that we will get more bang for the buck if we 
reach back as early as we possibly can. And whatever the 
programs are, whether they are NASA programs or Department of 
Ed programs or wherever they live, I think we need to start 
early because a lot of those preconceived notions--and some of 
them are cultural, some of them are implicit bias. I mean, 
whatever the reasons are, they start very early. And once they 
start, it is hard to then peel them back, get them back on 
track at the high school level and certainly at the university 
level.
    Mr. Manber. A few moments ago, I talked about the 
extraordinary brand that is NASA. It is almost a disadvantage 
in the sense of your question. How do we reach out to more 
disadvantaged communities? We have now made a conscious effort 
to go reach out to not only African American and Hispanic 
communities but also first people. And when you go in and when 
you say you can go to the International Space Station--I will 
again use a New York analogy--they say, what? Are you selling 
us the Brooklyn Bridge?
    So one of the problems that we face is that NASA sometimes 
has a love-hate relationship with commercial, but the more that 
they hear that a small company sent an oven to the Space 
Station or the more times it comes out instead of it just being 
NASA and still very often when we do things, it is under NASA.
    Now, there are a lot of, let us say, first people who are 
not going to think that they can go to the Space Station in 
this way. So to answer you very practically, we have started to 
just go to some of these conferences, meet with the people, and 
say either we want to train you or we want to locate something 
in your community or on the reservation, or you can send 
something and we will help you.
    So it is just hard work, but we cannot wait for the 
government to do it. But we could have a little bit of emphasis 
put on NASA that sometimes it is not NASA. Sometimes it is the 
commercial sector. We say, just laughing, when something goes 
wrong, suddenly it is us, but when it is right, you know, it is 
NASA. It is a joke. It is a joke. So it is really trying to get 
over the brand, over the gravitas that is NASA.
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. To go back to what Ms. Condino said, so 
many students are drawn into STEM fields through the team 
experience of building something together. If you get away from 
the hero model where it is just that one really smart boy who 
answers the question and everyone else feels left out, if 
instead you have everyone at the table working together to 
solve something, that is where you get real diversity. We can 
do that at the middle school. We can do that in elementary 
school. We can do it in high school. That is what our whole new 
degree is. It is all inquiry and experiential learning. We can 
do it at scale. We can solve the problem of numbers.
    The thing that you can do to help would be to release some 
of the strictures on K through 12 on teaching to the test so 
that the teachers feel that they have more freedom to teach in 
these other ways that we know work.
    Senator Cruz. Well, wonderful. I want to thank each of the 
witnesses for your hard work, for your passion, your 
dedication, for your testimony here today.
    I am extending because I am being told that Senator Sinema 
is a minute away. So right as I am in my peroration, getting 
ready to try to wax eloquent, and instead--all right. Let us 
ask another question, which is universities.
    What should universities be doing better to expand STEM 
education? And let me ask you in particular. NASA Space Grants. 
How much of a difference are they making as a practical matter?
    Dr. Gladden. The Space Grant program is hugely impactful. 
It not only funds the faculty to do some of their exciting work 
and partner with NASA to solve a particular problem, but as I 
said earlier, there are always students involved in those 
problems. So those are critical.
    I would say beyond the NASA Space Grant program, higher ed 
as a whole is looking pretty deeply--and we certainly are at 
the University of Mississippi--at the STEM education 
experience. We have kind of a cookie cutter traditional mold, 
you know, we have this department and this school, and so on 
and so forth. But the real problems do not fall like that. And 
you have to be able to work with folks who do not have an 
engineering background but they have got an accounting degree 
or a business or a biology degree, or whatever it is. And the 
Center for Manufacturing Excellence is an example of this layer 
that you put on top of those majors that blends and then builds 
teams of those students. Some are accounting majors. Some are 
business majors. Some are engineers. But they are all working 
on a yearlong problem, and they are all taking class work so 
they understand each other's world.
    And so I think the more of that that we can do, get 
creative about--and, you know, teaching to the test--I am fully 
onboard with trying to move away from that and get more 
creative at the secondary level. That is kind of the same at 
the university. We do not teach them too much to the test, but 
we teach a lot to the way we have always taught. Can I get an 
amen on that?
    [Laughter.]
    Dr. Gladden. But I think I am beginning to see more and 
more willingness in the university and higher ed to think a 
little bit broader.
    Senator Cruz. And I will say I think that is the first call 
and response we have had at a subcommittee hearing.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cruz. That is wonderful.
    Senator Sinema.
    Senator Sinema. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for 
allowing me to pop out to another Committee. I am really glad 
to be back here.
    I want to thank you again, all, for being here and 
testifying on such an important issue.
    My first question is for Dr. Elkins-Tanton. In your written 
testimony, you discussed the difference between NASA-led 
flagship missions like the Hubble telescope and principal 
investigator-led missions like Psyche, the mission that you 
lead. When testifying before the full Commerce Committee in 
July, NASA Administrator Bridenstine made the same point which 
you make in your written testimony, that university-led PI 
missions are more likely to complete it on time and under 
budget as compared to the NASA flagship missions.
    As a principal investigator, what do you see as the 
differences between how PI-led missions are managed as compared 
to flagship missions? And what lessons could NASA learn from 
PI-led missions to keep more of our flagship missions both on 
time and on budget?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Thank you for the question, and I very 
much hope not to disappoint you with Psyche mission. We are 
going to try to be on schedule and under budget. We will see. 
Doing our best.
    The big difference between the way these missions are run--
the PI-led missions are conceived of as a whole and the team 
built from the beginning. And so the schedule and the budget 
and the instruments that are needed and the plan for the 
mission are all built as a whole, as a single unit. Whereas, 
the flagship missions come from the decadal survey. They are 
trying to answer the really big, really tough space challenges 
that we have. And they are put together by competition so that 
the instruments are picked from a pool, and then the leadership 
is picked. And so once the leadership is in place, what they 
really have is a whole bunch of separate, I might say, city 
states that they need to blend into a functional government all 
together. And that is a big challenge.
    And it is not that I think this is wrong. I think that the 
aspirations of our flagship missions and the new technology 
developments that they drive, which makes budgeting much 
harder, are what we should be doing. They are the hard things. 
But if there is a possibility to create a more united team 
earlier in the process, I think that will help with the 
budgeting and scheduling challenges because that is where I see 
them coming from.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you.
    My next question is also for you but I welcome all of our 
panelists to respond if they are interested as well.
    I am really proud of Arizona's universities that we have 
taken advantage of NASA programs like Discovery and New 
Frontiers, which provide principal investigators the 
opportunity to propose and receive funding for a mission that 
advances NASA's scientific and exploration goals.
    What I am concerned about is what happens when one of these 
missions ends. So after NASA and the university make 
significant investments to develop expertise in a complex and 
focused field of air space, astrophysics, or astrobiology, the 
funding to support the research disappears afterwards. So this 
can lead both NASA and universities to lose a key source of 
expertise and it makes some of the follow up research for these 
missions much harder to complete.
    So what opportunities currently exist or should exist to 
help NASA and universities make continuous or long-term 
investments in space-related research fields, and what more can 
we do to help NASA, universities, the private sector, and 
individual researchers develop these long-term relationships to 
fuel decades of research?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. It is such a constant problem in space 
research, both on the science and the engineering side, that 
you buildup an incredible expertise and then the funding and 
the emphasis goes away. And then those people need to leave for 
other jobs.
    We saw this happen after the Apollo era with lunar science. 
Our institutional knowledge of lunar science began to drain 
away because the funding was severely cut.
    I envision a kind of world where when we are so lucky, as 
we have been in Arizona at UofA and at ASU, to win these big 
competed missions and we get these tremendous teams together, 
what I would love to see is the opportunity for those people 
then, waiting for the next possible mission opportunity, rather 
than vanishing into a different industry, that is a moment when 
we can bring together university, private sector, NASA to do 
these kind of triangle sector efforts to hit the next big 
target that we need. And then we do not lose the people. They 
are still on the same teams. They are still educating new 
members, and they are connecting better with the private 
sector. They are doing tech transfer. They are filling in a gap 
in Artemis. They are doing whatever the next important thing 
is. And I would love to see NASA create partnerships like that 
that would strengthen and grow a workforce.
    Senator Sinema. Yes?
    Dr. Gladden. So you are absolutely right that when those 
specific projects end and the funding stops and then you have 
sort of invested quite a lot of time and energy and money into 
developing a relationship and a skill set and then it is gone.
    So one of the things that we do at the University of 
Mississippi--and other universities do this very well also--is 
really work on developing the relationship with the program so 
that when that funding ends, that we have got a trusting 
relationship between the scientist and engineers on the Federal 
side and our faculty members and research staff. And so what 
that tends to do is the funding may have dried up or shifted in 
other directions, but once you have the relationship there and 
you have some flexibility in your skill set--that is another 
key element is that, as we were talking about sort of changing 
the way we think about developing on the education side a more 
flexible curriculum, that is going to lead to a more flexible 
faculty in the future that are not so narrow that this is what 
I do and if it does not fit in this box, then I am not involved 
or I cannot be involved. And so I think those sort of things, 
having that flexibility and that long-term relationship, is 
really key to extending the time that we are collaboratively 
working.
    The one other point I will quickly make is we do have some 
models with other Federal agencies where we have scientists 
from the Federal side come and stay on our campus for extended 
periods of time--it might be 3 months, 6 months, or even 
longer--and our faculty members also go there for extended 
periods of time. Those are incredibly valuable. And we even go 
so far with a particular agency where we have Federal 
scientists embedded full-time with our faculty in one of our 
facilities. That is the kind of thing that builds relationships 
that last decades.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you.
    So my next question--sorry, Dr. Elkins-Tanton. I have 
another question for you.
    Since 2015, you have worked as the principal investigator 
on the Psyche mission, which proposes to send a probe to 
Psyche, an asteroid with an exposed nickel-iron core. 
Apparently it resembles the core of a newly formed planet much 
like the Earth several billion years ago.
    As you have developed this mission, how have you worked 
with both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as other 
researchers at Arizona State University, and what do you 
believe that students and researchers gain from the opportunity 
to work firsthand on a mission like Psyche. And then what more 
can we do to ensure that students and researchers across the 
country have the opportunity to participate in NASA missions?
    Dr. Elkins-Tanton. Thank you.
    We have been hitting this topic I think really beautifully, 
and I want to focus on a couple of really key parts of what we 
have tried to do in Psyche, which I think connect so much with 
everything that we have each said, and that is giving students 
at all levels the opportunities to work in interdisciplinary 
teams toward goals.
    So Dr. Cassie Bowman is the research faculty at ASU who 
runs all of the Psyche student collaborations. And one of the 
innovations that she has made--in fact, we are writing research 
papers about this--is figuring out how to run capstone teams. 
But we would really like them not to be capstone teams. We want 
them to be every semester every year of your education working 
together where there is an engineer and there is a user 
experience designer, there is a graphic designer, there is a 
marketer, there is a student project manager on the team just 
like it will be when they hit the workforce, trying to solve 
problems that come from the project. And so our engineers, our 
people at JPL, our people at Maxar, they share challenges they 
are facing and give them to these teams.
    We had a set of capstones that competed for a flight on a 
Blue Origin launch, and the team that won was a virtual team. 
We had someone in the military who was on a ship. We had 
someone at a university on the east coast, in the south, 
someone in the north. They literally mailed their hardware back 
and forth. They did Skype teams. And they won. And so that is 
the workforce of the future. And that is how we want to engage 
people. I think we should do as much of this as we can.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I want to just take a moment again to thank 
all of our witnesses for being here today, and I want to thank 
you for hosting this Committee hearing. This is something I am 
very interested in. It is important to my state. I know it is 
important to our country, not just for the future 
competitiveness of our country, but for our national security. 
So thank you for the work that you all do, and thank you in 
particular for the folks that you are teaching and mentoring 
across our country to ensure that we remain competitive and 
safe. I appreciate it.
    Senator Cruz. Well, thank you, Senator Sinema.
    And I want to thank each of the witnesses. It is sort of, 
as Yogi Berra said, ``deja vu all over again.'' But thank you 
for your terrific testimony, for your passion, and for the 
difference you are making.
    The record for this hearing will remain open for the next 
two weeks. Any Senators are asked during that time to submit 
questions for the record, and upon receipt, the witnesses are 
asked to submit your written answers to the Subcommittee as 
soon as possible.
    And with that, this hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:17 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

     Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                       Dr. Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
    Question. The Cosmosphere, located in Hutchison, Kansas, is a great 
example of the role informal education centers play in introducing STEM 
and inspiring students at an early age. Nick Hague, a native Kansan, 
and astronaut who recently served as Flight Engineer on the 
International Space Station for Expedition 60 has stated that a junior 
high trip to the Cosmosphere reinforced his desire to become an 
astronaut. Additionally, they have hundreds of stories of students who 
participated in their education or camp programs, ultimately going on 
to work at NASA, JPL, Space X, Virgin Galactic, the Armed Forces and 
more. How can we continue to leverage centers like these toward 
advancing our common goal of furthering STEM education and inspiring 
future generations?
    Answer. I had a similar formative experience as a child while 
visiting the American Museum of Natural History. The effectiveness of 
informal education is striking, and it shows the truth of the saying 
that education is what is done to us, and learning is what we do for 
ourselves. In museums and libraries and community centers and camps all 
over the country, people are learning, and that learning feels personal 
and exciting and important. We need these programs.
    The work of the NASA Education group is central to the vibrancy, 
rigor, and networking of this kind of program. I've followed their work 
closely and endorse it highly. These programs need a structure and 
support to grow in synergy and excellence, and not become isolated and 
possibly outdated. NASA effectively connects the centers with 
universities and with each other. Further, corporate partnerships with 
the growing space sector should increasingly help bear the burden and 
better connect the triangle of private sector--education--government.
    Your word, inspiration, is central to all of our efforts. Unless a 
person is inspired they may wander aimlessly in their education and 
career; in fact, they may wander off the path. Our world needs all the 
inspiration we can get and these informal education programs are a key 
ingredient to societal vigor and progress.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                             Jeffrey Manber
    Question. The Cosmosphere, located in Hutchison, Kansas, is a great 
example of the role informal education centers play in introducing STEM 
and inspiring students at an early age. Nick Hague, a native Kansan, 
and astronaut who recently served as Flight Engineer on the 
International Space Station for Expedition 60 has stated that a junior 
high trip to the Cosmosphere reinforced his desire to become an 
astronaut. Additionally, they have hundreds of stories of students who 
participated in their education or camp programs, ultimately going on 
to work at NASA, JPL, Space X, Virgin Galactic, the Armed Forces and 
more. How can we continue to leverage centers like these toward 
advancing our common goal of furthering STEM education and inspiring 
future generations?
    Answer. Of all the challenges faced by political leaders, 
convincing students that space exploration is cool is not the biggest 
hurdle! Kids have a natural feel for learning about space, whether 
human exploration or scientific missions to other planets. At 
Nanoracks, we have our educational subsidiary, DreamUp, which has sent 
hundreds of privately funded student research projects to the 
International Space Station. The goal is to leverage the communities, 
the families, the parents and the schools to engage more with local 
centers and programs. Outreach is the biggest need right now. We have 
the wonderful partners such as the Cosmosphere. What is needed is more 
engagement with the communities including outreach and educational 
programs. It is very important that we ensure the students of today can 
fill the technical jobs of tomorrow.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                       J.R. (Josh) Gladden, Ph.D.
    Question. The Cosmosphere, located in Hutchison, Kansas, is a great 
example of the role informal education centers play in introducing STEM 
and inspiring students at an early age. Nick Hague, a native Kansan, 
and astronaut who recently served as Flight Engineer on the 
International Space Station for Expedition 60 has stated that a junior 
high trip to the Cosmosphere reinforced his desire to become an 
astronaut. Additionally, they have hundreds of stories of students who 
participated in their education or camp programs, ultimately going on 
to work at NASA, JPL, Space X, Virgin Galactic, the Armed Forces and 
more. How can we continue to leverage centers like these toward 
advancing our common goal of furthering STEM education and inspiring 
future generations?
    Answer. I could not agree more that centers such as the 
Cosmosphere, the Center for Math and Science Education at the 
University of Mississippi, and many other similar organizations around 
the country, play a critical role in the sustained interest and passion 
of young people in the STEM fields. I have a personal story similar to 
that of Nick Hague referenced in the question. I have no doubt that the 
visits I made to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, as well as other 
science museums in the southeast U.S. had a profound effect on my 
interest in the field of physics. These fields take a great deal of 
education and sustained dedication, so ultimate success in getting into 
the STEM workforce requires a level of deep interest and passion.
    The question is, how can we maximize the exposure of young people 
to these experiences during their formative years (approximately 6th--
12th grade)? I have a few suggestions:

  1.  Lower the financial bar of entry to these museums and education 
        centers as much as possible. No cost of course would be best, 
        but perhaps free under 18 years old might be more realistic. I 
        understand these facilities are not inexpensive to design, 
        build, and maintain. Perhaps these kinds of endeavors are well 
        suited for public-private partnerships.

  2.  Increase geographic access as much as possible. While some 
        minimum population center would be needed for sustainability, 
        creative on-line elements such as virtual reality, can help 
        exposure in more rural areas. The University of Mississippi has 
        established a VR Learning Lab to both teach students how to 
        build VR worlds and help public and private sectors understand 
        the training and outreach opportunities.

  3.  Include elements in these centers that not only talk about the 
        amazing science, engineering and technology; but also what a 
        career in these fields ``looks like''. These could include 
        regular speakers from professionals in the field, recorded 
        video, and on-line video chats. These should be as interactive 
        as possible so young people can ask questions.

  4.  Increase awareness as much as possible. This would include 
        outreach to schools, civic groups, local government, social 
        media, religious organizations. Let people know what is 
        available to them in their area and how to access it.

  5.  Keep the content and programming fresh. Some sections should 
        regularly rotate and capture emerging technologies to provide 
        vision about not only where we have been, but where we are 
        going. This provides some motivation for students to regularly 
        visit and deepen their interest in STEM careers.
                                 ______
                                 
     Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Jerry Moran to 
                         Shella Rivano Condino
    Question. The Cosmosphere, located in Hutchison, Kansas, is a great 
example of the role informal education centers play in introducing STEM 
and inspiring students at an early age. Nick Hague, a native Kansan, 
and astronaut who recently served as Flight Engineer on the 
International Space Station for Expedition 60 has stated that a junior 
high trip to the Cosmosphere reinforced his desire to become an 
astronaut. Additionally, they have hundreds of stories of students who 
participated in their education or camp programs, ultimately going on 
to work at NASA, JPL, Space X, Virgin Galactic, the Armed Forces and 
more. How can we continue to leverage centers like these toward 
advancing our common goal of furthering STEM education and inspiring 
future generations?
    Answer. The influence and impact to students of opportunities like 
these is prodigious. Many claimed that it truly inspired them to pursue 
STEM courses and careers. I believe it is best if we continue to 
provide these kinds of opportunities particularly internships, not only 
to undergraduate and post graduate students, but as well as high 
schools students. An example is how Aurora Flight Sciences, an 
aerospace company whose headquarters is based on Manassas, VA. Aurora 
provided internship experiences to 3 of my high school students from 
Presidio High School during their senior year. Their experiences paved 
the way for them to pursue mechanical engineering! All three finished 
with ME degrees, currently 1 is working for Aurora, 1 for Boeing and 1 
associate professor of mechanical engineering in a university!
    Summer camps and other STEM educational activities can also be a 
great start to expose young kids however, most of them require 
extremely expensive fees just to participate. For students coming from 
rural areas and cannot afford fees, this would limit their chances of 
participation. There are only a few programs like NASA High School 
Aerospace Scholars (Texas and Virginia) that provide all expense trip 
to students who qualified and completed prior work. The NASA Student 
Launch Initiative for high school and middle school used to provide a 
small amount of scholarship money to help purchase materials for the 
rocket at least, but now it is taken away. Therefore, schools who 
cannot afford the materials, even if they qualify and have students who 
are skillful cannot participated due to the cost of both rocket and 
travels. Although my Presidio Rocketry Teams in the past will do 
anything to make it possible for us to participate, like crazy 
fundraising (raffling goats, BBQ and donut sales) and driving 24 hrs. 
on a yellow school bus just to make it to the rocket launch in 
Huntsville AL, NOT everyone can be willing or has the means to do so.
    I believe it is best if we provide more accessible and affordable 
programs for all. Access to virtual programs can also be an option, 
specially to those schools in the farthest corners or edges of the 
country.
    As a classroom teacher, I went on my own way to bring STEM to my 
class. I attended numerous STEM workshops and professional developments 
on my own dime to ensure I received proper training and enough 
knowledge to share it to my own schools and students. Again, not all 
teachers could be willing to use their own money for things like these, 
but providing teachers training and support may play a big difference. 
I brought in rocketry, robotics, math and science competitions, STEM 
business, and so on and so forth so that despite our challenging 
geographic location, our students can still experience the same 
opportunities as other kids in the cities. We had virtual career days 
where students talk to experts and professionals through skype. But 
these endeavors may be small in scale, but it has a large effect on our 
little town. Many of the students in the past only wish to graduate 
from high school to get a job at a grocery store or gas stations, but 
majority of the students now aspire to go to college and finish college 
so they can have better lives in the future.

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