NESEC
IGES led the NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) in strong partnership with the world-renowned Earth sciences organizations at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Langley Research Center (LaRC). The NESEC award was funded through a NASA cooperative agreement (2016-2026) as part of the NASA Science Activation Program collective of projects.
NESEC’s goal was to enable broad participation in authentic NASA Earth STEM experiences for lifelong learners. We did this by creating engaging, meaningful, and authentic STEM experiences and resources in three interconnected areas: GLOBE Observer Citizen Science, Science Investigations with NASA, and Strategic Partnerships.
The cross-organizational NESEC team fostered deeper engagement with NASA STEM assets – people, science, and data – across the spectrum of public science engagement. These included large scale events and outreach to millions that increased awareness and inspired interest in NASA STEM, longer-term investigations targeted for educators and learners of all ages, and learner-defined research projects that impacted their science identity and contributed to NASA Science. NESEC final reports (executive summary and full report) describe the deep and enduring impacts of this project, which engaged more than 200,000 learners and educators and more than 304,000 citizen scientists; generated 2M+ citizen scientist observations representing 169,000+ volunteer hours; and resulted in 62 publications including 45 peer-reviewed papers.