For many students, the path to a NASA career begins at a community college. These local, two-year institutions offer valuable flexibility and options to those aspiring to be part of the nation’s next generation STEM workforce. NASA offers several opportunities for community college students to expand their horizons, make connections with agency experts, add valuable NASA experiences to their resumes, and home in on the types of STEM roles that best fit their skills and interests. Below are some of the exciting NASA activities and experiences available to community college students.
Get an introduction to NASA, its missions, and its workplace culture through NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS). This three-part series enables students to advance their knowledge of the agency, grow their STEM capabilities, interact with NASA experts, and learn about the different pathways to a NASA career.
Mission 1: Discover is a five-week, online orientation course that serves as an introduction to NASA.
Mission 2: Explore is a gamified mission to the Moon or Mars in which students develop a design solution while learning about the agency as a workplace.
Mission 3: Innovate is a three-week hybrid capstone project consisting of two weeks of online preparation and one week participating in a hands-on engineering design challenge at a NASA center.
NCAS begins with Mission 1 and students must complete each mission to be eligible for the next.
NASA’s student challenges and competitions invite students across a range of ages and education levels to innovate and build solutions to many of the agency’s spaceflight and aviation needs – and community college students across the U.S. are eligible for many of these opportunities. In NASA’s Student Launch challenge, each team designs, builds, and tests a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload. In the MUREP Innovation Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTIC)Teams from U.S.-designated Minority-Serving Institutions, including community colleges, have the opportunity to brainstorm and pitch new commercial products based on NASA technology.
NASA’s student challenges and competitions are active at varying times throughout the year – new challenges are sometimes added, and existing opportunities evolve – so we recommend students visit the NASA STEM Opportunities and Activities page and research specific challenges to enable planning and preparation for future participation.
Build an experiment and launch it aboard a sounding rocket! Through the hands-on RockOn! and RockSat programs, students gain experience designing and building an experiment to fly as a payload aboard a sounding rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. In RockOn!, small teams get an introduction to creating a sounding rocket experiment, while RockSat-C and RockSat-X are more advanced experiment flight opportunities.
Be a part of the NASA team! With a NASA internship, students work side-by-side with agency experts, gaining authentic workforce experience while contributing to projects that align with NASA’s goals. Internships are available in a wide variety of disciplines in STEM and beyond, including communications, finance, and more. Each student has a NASA mentor to help guide and coach them through their internship.
The National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project, better known as Space Grant, is a national network of colleges and universities working to expand opportunities for students and the public to participate in NASA’s aeronautics and space projects. Each state has its own Space Grant Consortium that may provide STEM education and training programs; funding for scholarships and/or internships; and opportunities to take part in research projects, public outreach, state-level student challenges, and more. Programs, opportunities, and offerings vary by state; students should visit their state’s Space Grant Consortium website to find out about opportunities available near them.
