School notes for July 12, 2011

Locals accepted to Aerospace Scholars

James Maguire, Madeline Down, and David Choi, all from Washougal High School, will be participating in one of the four Washington Aerospace Scholars Program summer residency sessions held this summer at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

In addition, teacher Jason Blaesing will be joining the students as a academic facilitator.

W.A.S. is a competitive, educational program for high school juniors from across the state. Teachers were also competitively chosen to serve as evaluators and participants in the summer residency.

The students are among 160 statewide who were selected.

To qualify for the residency program, they spent six months studying a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum via the Internet and were selected to attend one of the four summer sessions based on their academic performance on the distance-learning lessons.

During the residency, they will collaborate with the other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars.

W.A.S. scholars are guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators as they plan these missions.

The program is designed to inspire students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.) but they also learn about mission management, budgets, the legal aspects of space exploration, and medicine.

W.A.S. scholars will also participate in a number of hands-on engineering challenges, including design, construction and deployment of robotic rovers, model rockets, lander devices, and payload lofting systems. Summer residency participants will receive briefings from experts in the fields of engineering, science, physics, medicine, project management, risk management, and space exploration, such as Dr. Bonnie J. Dunbar, NAE, retired NASA astronaut.

They will also visit Everett for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Boeing Commercial Airplane assembly plant, tour Aerojet’s Redmond facilities, and the engineering laboratories at the University of Washington.

As graduates of W.A.S., these students will join more than 700 program alumni, representing 170 different Washington high schools.

Students land on dean’s list

Several Camas students were named to the dean’s list at Eastern Washington University for the spring quarter dean’s list.

To be named to the list, a student must earn at least a 3.5 GPA.

Students include Allyson Dunlap, Sara Forgey, Noah Hoff, Patrick McHugh, Kevin Pinch, Eric Polch, Keele Roberts, Taylor Swoverland and Jessie Tai.

Camas residents graduate from George Fox

Two local students recently earned degrees from George Fox University.

David Ochoa earned a master of arts in marriage and family therapy, and Kristin Marie Wennerlind earned a master of education in library media. Both are Camas residents.

Murder Mystery event at library

The Camas Public Library will host a “Murder Mystery” event at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 19 for teens in seventh through 12th grades.

Sterile gloves, casebooks, doughnuts and hot chocolate will be provided.

The event is part of the summer reading program. The library is located at 625 N.E. Fourth Ave.