Event Resources

Script for Welcome:

Good morning! My name is [name, pronouns], [title] for WA NASA Space Grant, and I would like to welcome you to our Space Grant interviews for our first year scholarship at the University of Washington. 

In 1989, NASA established the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, known as Space Grant. Space Grant is a national network of colleges and universities, belonging to 52 consortia (one for each state, DC, and Puerto Rico). The main goal of Space Grant is to expand participation in and knowledge of NASA’s projects by supporting STEM education, research, and public outreach efforts.`

So, our office – the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium – supports that mission in the state of Washington through various efforts, including this scholarship. A few other examples of things our office does: we coordinate internship opportunities, hands-on students projects in rocketry, ballooning, Cubesats, robotics and more! We also run our own research program called the Summer Undergraduate Research Program or SURP.

Our UW Space Grant scholars not only receive scholarship funds but become a part of a community. Space Grant helps students find a small community within a large university that provides access to unique events and programs. We have a student organization, called SPACE that plans social events, mentoring opportunities, and helps with outreach efforts. We have had networking events with Blue Origin, a lecture and lunch with Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders, and recently hosted a live ISS downlink with an Astronaut Josh Cassida! Our scholars have had NASA internships, done impactful research in a variety of subject areas, and have gone on graduate school or exciting careers.

I’ll turn it over to Eli in just a minute to go over some items on the schedule but as a reminder you should be able to edit your zoom name if you haven’t already or we can change it for you.  Please include your full name and you are welcome to also include your pronouns. Thank you again for joining us today, we look forward to hearing more about you. Over to you, Eli!

Schedule and Zoom Reminders:

As a reminder our schedule goes all day today but we know that many of you have other obligations so feel free to join our other sessions as your schedule allows. For your assigned interview time, you have been sent a specific Zoom link, please use that to join your session. Our other sessions including the virtual tours, research talks, and the end of day Q+A session will all take place on this Zoom link. Please refer to the schedule you received via email for the additional session information. If you have any technical difficulties or other issues during the day, please send us an email - we will be monitoring the inbox all day (put nasa@uw.edu in the chat).

In your interview, you will be placed with a few other scholarship candidates and two Space Grant panelists. The panelists will ask a question and you will take turns providing an answer. Our goals is not to grill you - we simply want to get to know more about you and your academic and career interests. So do your best to stay relaxed and be yourself!

That is all the information we wanted to provide for you before we start the rest of our day. Does anyone have any questions before we wrap up the welcome?