NGA Joins with Universities to 'De-Mystify’ STEM

NGA Joins University of Missouri-St. Louis, Harris Stowe State University to ‘de-mystify’ STEM for Students

Melanie Bick, NGA office of geomatics, briefed staff and faculty members from University of Missouri-St. Louis, Harris Stowe State University Feb. 2, on tradecraft development of geode. Copyright NGA Office of Corporate Communications

NGA is offering a series of monthly workshops for university education faculty, K-12 teachers and K-12 teachers-in-training at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, with the aim to help educators and teachers better understand and teach STEM — science, technology, engineer and math — disciplines, especially those of high interest at NGA, to prepare the geospatial workforce of the future.

The workshops, hosted at NGA’s Moonshot Labs unclassified collaboration space in downtown St. Louis, connect faculty, teachers and teachers-in-training with NGA experts to help teachers build curriculum around the STEM disciplines necessary to help students become effective earth scientists, and to train students in the STEM careers that are in high-demand at NGA.

“While leaving the curriculum development to the experts, these informal discussions help NGA de-mystify the STEM topics and STEM careers that NGA needs for its future workforce, for teachers whose students that might not know much yet about the agency or what we do,” said Jessie Bleile, who is serving as a visiting faculty at both universities on behalf of NGA. “We’re working directly with teachers to exchange ideas on training and tradecraft to bring more talent into NGA and STEM.”

NGA’s Jessie Bleile addresses workshop attendees at a K-12 faculty STEM series event at Moonshot Labs, Feb. 2. Copyright NGA Office of Corporate Communications

This program falls under the educational partnership agreements NGA holds with both HSSU and UMSL, said Bleile.

In the most recent session Feb. 2 at Moonshot Labs, Melanie Bick, Source Office of Geomatics, gave a presentation on hiring pathways and training programs in geomatics.

Bick, Office of Geomatics' people, culture and community lead, spoke extensively to workshop attendees on what she has coined as “Individualized Education and Training Plans,” which are the desired tracks for NGA geomatics tradecraft development.

These tracks are designed as a progression of training and application to develop geodesists from incoming track one undergraduate level through a track four end state of tradecraft doctorate-level leadership.

Dr. Sonya Bahar, professor of bio- physics at University of Missouri St. Louis physics and astronomy department, answers a few questions after the workshop Feb.2. Copyright NGA Office of Corporate Communications

When asked if she found the session valuable, workshop attendee Sonya Bahar, Ph.D., professor of biophysics in UMSL's physics and astronomy department said “It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity, there’s a lot of interest from the physics side at UMSL in terms of building a program to fit with NGA’s needs.”

Bahar further stated that UMSL currently has four physics undergraduate students, and two computer science students who are working at the Geosciences AI Application Lab, the GAIA, with Dawn King, Source Foundation Group, out of Moonshot Lab and that “… we have students who have done internships at NGA, and who are now staff members at NGA. So, we already have a very strong connection, and we are very, very excited about making that stronger.”