Student - Mentor Aerospace Workforce Development Scholarships/Training Grants

The CaSGC has initiated and supports several aerospace workforce development efforts that involve science, engineering, and management student teams (graduate and undergraduate level) in hands-on aerospace projects. These programs were created to provide students with practical experience and Scholarships/Training Grants while under the guidance of mentors from the industrial, academic, and government sectors.

The CaSGC student-mentor efforts (i.e., flight programs such as CubeSAT at Stanford, Cal Poly SLO, UC Santa Barbara and Satellite Missions at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Stanford, and CSU San Jose, Engineering efforts at CSU Long Beach, CalPoly SLO, USC, San Jose State, Aeronautics programs at UC San Diego and CSU Long Beach and KC 135 Programs at UC Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute, San Diego State, UC San Diego, and CalTech) are growing and are showing significant results. Each of these student-mentor programs demonstrate baseline characteristics that industry, NASA, and the California Agencies have realized are critical for solving the high technology workforce problems in California. Those baseline characteristics are as follows:

• Team participation of students from K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels;
• Experiential learning through "real" aerospace-related projects
       o Highest priority given to workforce skill development of students & mentors
       o Emphasizes students experiencing mission life cycle (define, design, build, fly, analyze) in less than 2 years
• Community-based private - public partnerships
       o Involves industry, government (local, State, and Federal) and academia for mentors, facilities, and investment
• Requires new "Business Plan" approach
       o Private Sector - Integrated into budget of every project
• Addresses "Human Capital" issues of the State and Federal Government

Students interested in the student - mentor project opportunities should contact their local campus Space Grant office for participation information.

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