Yaara Crane (TAS 2013), Lindsay Zurawski, and Hassan Mims, all teachers from Annadale High School in Annandale, Virginia, led a week-long summer program in July for rising 11th graders. The program is inquiry-based and introduces students to new experiences in different subject areas.  

 Each day, students took a field trip to a new place to hear from experts in their field. On July 10, 2014 the group visited Gateway to NOAA and the Science on a Sphere on NOAA’s campus in Silver Spring, MD. LTJG Aaron Colohan spoke to the students about the NOAA Corps and Dr. Walter Smith, NOAA Geophysicist, demonstrated visualizations on Science on a Sphere.

Yaara said, “The students all said that listening to both LTJG Colohan and Dr. Smith speak was one of the highlights of their whole summer program. They really connected with the message that they can find a way to make their own path in life and follow their interests. This is the first time many of them have actually been able to meet and listen to real scientists and they learned that scientists are not scary! Most of them said their favorite Science on a Sphere visualization was the airplane traffic around the world. A close second was the Facebook connections, of course!”