Expanding Educational Frontiers

Expanding Educational Frontiers

Students in the Boler College of Business are applying business skills to help NASA better understand their impact on the environment. The project, which is part of a new partnership with NASA initiated in September, provides students with research experience contributing to NASA’s missions to space. The student-led research will try to determine “The Effect of Rocket Launches on the Environment.” Boler College of Business is one of four universities chosen to participate in this program. 

The collaboration aims to better prepare undergraduate and graduate students for increasingly complex STEM career pathways by providing real-world collaborative research experiences for a team of cross-disciplinary students. This partnership will be a capstone experience where students earn college credit through participation.

Walter Simmons, Associate Dean of Boler Academic Affairs, coordinates this partnership. Simmons says Dr. Ficawoyi Donou-Adonsou’s Empirical Methods course, EC 310, is the focal point of the partnership. Students taking part in the class will engage in meaningful research that will contribute to a report at the end of the calendar year. This report, written by students, will be sent to NASA and used in their mission development. For their involvement, students will receive either credit in their major or capstone credit. Their assignment culminates with a presentation of their findings to NASA in December 2022. 

While the empirical methods course is the primary focus of this partnership, Simmons explains that “students from other classes and departments are welcome to become involved. We have graduate students involved in this project as well.”

Simmons credits Dr. Elad Granot, Dean of the Boler College of Business, for creating this relationship with NASA. Simmons also says this will be an ongoing partnership with the government agency, stating, “…this is only the beginning.”

NASA will identify relevant research areas, issues, or problems that the student team can use to develop specific studies. This partnership results from NASA’s objective to “create unique opportunities for a diverse set of students to contribute to NASA’s work in exploration and discovery.”

“The partnership with NASA illustrates our pledge to innovation. We’re Cleveland’s Business School, and we’re committed to creating impactful, once-in-a-lifetime experiences for our students,” said Dr. Granot.