Student and Teacher Grants

The Kerry Smith, Jim Brown and Bill Lord of the SARA Grant Committee announce the following grants have been awarded since the last Journal.

Chirag Jain of India was awarded $500 towards his attendance at Astronomy Camp in Arizona. According to Dr. Don McCarthy, Chirag is one of the “most motivated students” he has had apply for the camp. The camp awarded a scholarship to Chirag and the additional money is to help him make the trip from India to Arizona.

Dr. Raj Kombiyil of Kerla, India was awarded a Radio Jove to use at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham High School. Dr. Kombiyil will use the Radio Jove with his high school engineering students and well as graduate students from the Integrated Physics and Math Program. He expects to have 200 students involved with the Radio Jove Project this year. He also plans to do outreach in the surrounding village which he hopes will build “excitement and enthusiasm for science amongst students from a young age.”

An Itty Bitty Telescope (IBT) is being sent to Allan Whittome who teaches grades 2 through 8 at Badgingarra School in Australia. Mr. Whittome wants the students to experience the excitement of detecting the sun, their own body radiation and tree branches. He plans to use the IBT to introduce 100 students to the basics of radio astronomy both within his school and surrounding schools and communities.

Jean-Phillipe Muller, Applied Physics teacher at Lycée Louis Armand- Labo d’electronique school in Mulhouse, France requested an Inspire and SuperSID unit. He teaches student between 19 and 23 years of age, learning electronics and applied physics to be electronics technicians. Kathleen Franzen, President of the Inspire Project donated the Inspire unit for this grant.

Stanford/SARA Grants

In addition to the SARA Grants awarded this year, the Stanford Solar Center and SARA SuperSID collaboration has sent 58 units free of charge to students and teachers in Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guyana, India, Nigeria, S Africa, Turkey, United States, Uzbekistan and Zambia.