Georgina Snelgrove and NASA CampI had the great pleasure of introducing my granddaughter Georgia Snelgrove as our visiting speaker.
Georgia is a Year 11 student at St Paul's Collegiate, in Hamilton. (The home of the RYLA course) In 2018, Georgia was offered the opportunity to attend the ACURA CASE Junior Space School sponsored by NASA.
The program itself is intended to encourage high school females into science and technology careers (STEM, / STEAM studies).
This was the first time the program had been offered to New Zealand girls although successfully running in Australia in the past 12 years.
Girls from Hamilton, Napier, Palmerston North and Wellington attended making up a group of 17 overall.
In December last year, the group traveled to the USA spending a week at Houston, Texas and the second week in Huntsville, Alabama. At that time, they had hands-on experiences in NASA space sciences, Biological, Earth and Energy Sciences, Personal and Leadership Development,
Expert presentation, including 7 habits of highly effective teens. They had the great experiences of astronaut physical and equipment training including zero-G and low gravity experiences and meeting shuttle astronaut Nicole Stott.
The New Zealand girls won the Team Leadership Challenge Award at the completion of the course, and in front of international students at the course, the team gave a mihi and waiata to all of the students present and their generous hosts. As grandparents, of course, we were very proud of them.