Vision, Passion, Courage Address at Annual PAIR Summit

Center Director Al Diaz delivered an inspiring address to the audience of the NASA Partnership Award for the Integration of Research (PAIR) in the undergraduate curriculum summit earlier this week. His address placed emphasis on the importance of education and how "bridges are being built to connect NASA with undergraduate educational experiences and strengthening discipline areas in math, science, engineering and technology (MSET)." He also reflected upon his own school struggles, which he managed to overcome with the assistance of his parents, NASA supported undergraduate and graduate programs and his passionate interest in NASA. To view his speech in its entirety, visit: http://internal.gsfc.nasa.gov/directives/speeches/diaz/vision.htm

Mabel J. Matthews, PAIR Summit PI Rep.; Dr. Carl Person, Acting Manager, MURED and Mr. George Reese, Asst Admin., NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs presents Al Diaz (2nd left) Center Director, NASA Goddard with a PAIR recognition award.

The PAIR award program falls within NASA's Equal Opportunity Office, Minority University Research and Education Division (MURED). MURED has been established to increase the agency's responsiveness to Federal mandates related to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Other Minority Universities, including Hispanic Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities.

The PAIR award provides an opportunity to build upon minority institution's rich history of educational excellence by creating partnerships between the minority institution's NASA-sponsored researcher and the MSET academic programs, and between the NASA Installations and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), other institutions of higher education and the aerospace community.

The undergraduate students in the PAIR initiative at Clark Atlanta University are actively involved in meaningful, real-world research involving NASA-derived data, as well as similar information from other sources such as environmental sciences. Dr. Marshall Shepherd from Goddard's Mesoscale Atmospheric Process Branch is the technical mentor to the students of the PAIR initiative at Clark Atlanta University. Dr. Shepherd has been working with the students on the project of studying the impact of urban areas on rainfall.

For more on the PAIR summit and the MURED, visit: http://mured.nasaprs.com/index.cfm

Photo by Chris Gunn/293