Teachers in Space, Inc.

The goal of TIS is to equip the teachers participating in our programs to encourage and prepare students to pursue further education and careers in the STEM industry. We are creating unique opportunities for a diverse set of students to contribute to space science work in exploration and discovery from their classrooms. The anticipated outcomes for participants attending our program(s), are as follows:
Assemble an Arduino microcontroller and sensors.
Program an Arduino and collect data from the sensors.
Assemble a CubeSat frame with an Arduino microcontroller.
Integrate CubeSats onto a balloon launch platform.
Launch, communicate with, and recover a balloon mission.
Communicate with CubeSats on suborbital and orbital missions.
Collect, analyze, present, and disseminate data collected from CubeSat missions.
Successfully stimulating students interest in STEM education complementing the efforts of NASA and others to build a diverse future STEM workforce. TIS expects the following long-range goals from our programs:
Students will pursue further education and experiences related to the STEM field, particularly in space exploration and aerospace engineering.
Teachers will report increased comfort and confidence teaching STEM topics, particularly engineering and technology.
Teachers will build a collaborative support network with each other, TIS and other aerospace professionals, to further develop and build experiments and contribute to real scientific research with their students.
Teachers will be introduced to space industry contacts to foster the creation of a pipeline for students into aerospace jobs and the commercial space sector.

TIS firmly believes STEM education should be available for every student regardless of their gender, ethnicity, background, personal circumstances, and financial status. We are providing equal access for teachers and educators with our professional development programs (in person) and our online course (remote learning). Our strategy is developing teachers who then bring their knowledge from our curriculum back into their classrooms, not just for their current students but for all their future students as well; creating a cumulative, collective impact for generations to come. TIS personnel are providing a year of support to our program participants to help them achieve classroom participation, student engagement, and increasing students pursuit of STEM education and future careers in the STEM and space industry workforce.

Since 2014 TiS has built cross sectional collaborative relationships, to bring our professional development STEM programs and initiatives throughout the USA. Presenting workshops at New York Challenger Center, Chicagos National Computer Science Teachers Association Conference, NASA Ames, a research facility in Silicon Valley, Cosmosphere in Kansas, onboard the Intrepid Museum in New York City, and the Challenger Center in New Mexico to name a few locations. As well as building relationships with commercial space companies so student classroom experiments can fly on high altitude balloon missions, Perlan glider flights, ZeroG flights, suborbital and orbital rocket launches.

Since 2014 TiS has presented space related workshops to teachers in Florida, Georgia, California, New York, Oklahoma, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Training teachers has enabled TiS to offer to students an empowering pathway of interaction with integrated STEM in the high-interest activity of designing experiments and building CubeSats. In 2022 and early 2023 TiS presented the latest iteration of its Flight Experiments Professional Development Workshops for Teachers to teachers in Maine, Kanas, and New Mexico. We support teachers in working with their students to design and build Arduino-based sensing experiments in 1U, 2U and 3U CubeSat frames for parabolic, stratospheric, suborbital, and orbital flight and data collection. A 2U cube of this design was developed and flown to space with Blue Origin in 2019 thanks to a NASA Flight Opportunities grant. Our first 3u orbital CubeSat Serenity, launched on Fireflys Alpha1 (was destroyed before reaching orbit). The second flight, launched October 1, 2022, reached very low orbit, and operated for 4 days in orbital. Serenity is committed to its third launch which will be on Firefly Alpha Launch Vehicle from Vandenberg AFB tentatively schedule for liftoff the first quarter of 2024. Students are further stimulated to pursue education and careers in the space industry when they are analyzing the data from their classroom experiments after flight. Our ultimate goal is to fly teachers to space with their classroom experiments!
Our sustainable development goal of providing quality education include:
By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations.