Dr. Penny Smith grant for balloon science research program reaches more students in minority-serving institution

(HOUSTON, Nov. 19, 2007)   Penny Morris Smith, associate professor in Natural Sciences at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD), has landed a grant of $800,000 from the National Science Foundation. The grant will support, over a 3-year period, the start-up of a new program to increase geoscience student participation and careers at minority institutions. Students in the project will launch and monitor NASA weather balloons gathering data for ozone research along the East and Gulf Coasts. The grant supports a consortium that includes UH-Downtown, Medgar Evers College (City University of New York) and South Carolina State University.   Participating students at UHD will also be working with the atmospheric science program at University of Houston.

"Most minority institutions cannot offer the broad research experience that tier-one schools can offer - it has to do with facilities and faculty," Smith explains.   "We need broader partnerships."

UHD students will learn field research and actually travel to New York for a balloon launch.   Our own balloon launches (white weather balloons with light payloads) will begin in Spring 2008.

"This collaboration gives students the opportunity to participate in a different type of research outside of the lab," Smith says.   "They will learn how to collect atmospheric data, which will prepare them for a new avenue of graduate studies that was previously unavailable at our institution."