NASA’s Jim Stofan on DIY rockets and the sixteen dialects of finch

Jim StofanQ: What started Jim Stofan on the path of science education that eventually landed him at the DC headquarters of the country’s premier space agency?

A: The story begins with a bang–and a tweet.

From a young age, Jim was fascinated with rockets. But it was a seed-eating songbird that first sparked his interest in science.

Now NASA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Integration, Jim spent his formative years in San Francisco. He was the son of two teachers and the nephew of the California Academy’s curator of ornithology. Jim’s uncle was especially interested in finches.

finch“He was the kind of uncle you’d see at Christmas,” says Jim. “The one all the kids gravitated to and the parents thought was too weird. He spoke 16 dialects of finch. He was able to tell you, ‘This bird comes from Chinatown’, or ‘That one lives out at Ocean Beach, and that one’s cheating on his wife over in the other tree.’ He really made science come alive.”

Following in his uncle’s (out-in-the-field) footsteps

With his uncle and his educator parents as role models, Jim says he spent most of his childhood learning about science in a hands-on, dynamic way-outside the classroom.

“And I ended up going in to a similar field as my uncle,” Jim continues. “When I first got to Sea World, I was a guide in their native species program, teaching folks about endangered Florida species, like manatees. I would do field ecology with students-take them out into the field, scuba diving; I would lead marine field studies down at the Keys. These are things you can’t do in a classroom. You can’t go out and do a night trawl, picking up microscopic creatures, and bringing them back into the lab to learn about them. But out in the field, all that becomes possible.”

A personal relationship with the natural world

Getting kids and educators out into the field, participating in hands-on experiences, has always been Jim’s passion. “When I worked at the National Wildlife Federation,” he recalls, “I tired to convey to kids and families that even if they don’t live out in the woods, there are ways to get back to nature, and learn about the world around them. It all starts with a personal connection to the natural world.”

In addition to his interest in animals and marine sciences, he’s still, of course, a fan of rockets, and thinks they make for compelling hands-on science.

“We do them in a variety of ways,” says Stofan, speaking not of the spacecraft NASA launches into the stratosphere but of the hands-on activities the agency has developed to teach kids about science. “Anything from little pop rockets-made out of construction paper, put in a film canister, then propelled by half an Alka Seltzer tablet and a little water–to rocketry challenges for older students, where they develop their own significantly powered rockets that can fly up to a mile. It’s about giving students the hands-on opportunity to understand the basics of propulsion.”

Howtosmile.org partners with NASA

When howtosmile.org began collaborating with NASA, the informal science site’s store of rocket science activities shot through the roof, so to speak. From Foam Rockets to Rocket Wind Tunnel to Pop Can Hero Engine, howtsomile.org now counts many NASA gems among its hundreds of space science activities.

Posted in Topics: Earth and Space Science, Ecology, Educator Profiles, Outdoor and Nature

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