Harrison Preparatory School’s Steven Huynh and Miranda VonPaige are participating in Phase One of the Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) Program. Huynh and VonPaige, along with 308 other high school juniors from 112 different public, private and home-school organizations across Washington state, are taking part in the seventh year of the WAS program.
Over the next five months, Huynh and VonPaige will complete online academic coursework to qualify for one of 160 summer residency session slots. The six-day summer residency will be held at The Museum of Flight in Seattle and will include designing a mission to Mars, taking tours of engineering facilities and laboratories, completing team engineering challenges and meeting leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Harrison Preparatory School 11th-graders Steven Huynh and Miranda VonPaige are participating in Phase One of the Washington Aerospace Scholars Program.
To qualify for the summer residency, Huynh and VonPaige must satisfactorily complete 10 online lessons, consisting of research essays, space-related math problems and detailed graphics illustrating their ideas. They also have the option to receive five University of Washington credits in Space and Space Travel upon their successful completion of the online WAS curriculum.
“I really enjoy the math portion of science and learning the different concepts,” said VonPaige, who would like to major in physics or chemistry in college.
Huynh, who wants to earn a mechanical engineering degree and work as an aerospace engineer for NASA, hopes he qualifies for the summer program.
“It will be exciting to work with some of the top scientists in this field,” said Huynh.
The WAS program is a free, competitive STEM education program for Washington state high school juniors affiliated with NASA Johnson Space Center’s National High School Aerospace Scholars program. Its primary goal is to excite and prepare students to pursue careers pathways in STEM fields using a distance-learning curriculum developed in partnership with NASA and the University of Washington.