last modified: Monday, May 24, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MAXWELL AFB, Ala. — Civil Air Patrol is bringing in top education and aerospace leaders to help revamp its venerable National Congress on Aviation and Space Education, traditionally known as NCASE.

“The National Congress has been an institution in the aerospace education arena for almost 40 years,” said Judy Rice, CAP’s deputy director of aerospace education. “In recent years, however, we’ve seen the face of education change a great deal. If NCASE is going to meet the needs of today’s teachers, we’ve got to change as well.”

To set those changes in motion, a conference planning group met May 10, 2004 at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center in Washington, D.C. Among those attending were representatives from NASA, the FAA, the U.S. Department of Education, the Challenger Center, the U.S. Air Force, the Wolf Aviation Fund, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Space Day Partners, STARBASE, and Fairfax County Public Schools.

“Science teachers have to meet so many requirements these days, including those of the No Child Left Behind Act,” said committee member Tony Fowler of the U.S. Department of Education. “NCASE should be designed to emphasize the practical application of aerospace education to those requirements. This conference must help them develop ways to meet those demands without becoming bogged down in ‘teaching to the test.’”

The conference planning committee has been divided into groups that will focus specifically on strategic planning, venue planning, marketing, and transportation. CAP has committed the next year to planning, and will resume with a revamped NCASE in October 2006 in Washington, D.C. They have also changed the name of the conference to National Conference on Aviation and Space Education.

CAP’s decision to update NCASE has met with approval from some of aerospace education’s most prominent figures, including legendary aviator A. Scott Crossfield. “NCASE has always been hosted by CAP and the U.S. Air Force, both of which are dealing with limited resources to support such a conference,” Crossfield said. “There’s a danger that the conference could be discontinued altogether, and we want to be sure that doesn’t happen. Aerospace education is critical for our nation’s children, and teachers want the best possible ways to incorporate aviation and space into their lessons. NCASE must focus on what today’s teachers need to prepare their students for an increasingly high-tech world, and that means looking at the realities of today’s classrooms, today’s students and the emerging technologies that are affecting us all.”

For classroom teachers attending the 2006 conference, planners want to provide take-home activities and lesson plans, best practices in aerospace teaching, and orientation on a variety of high-tech concepts and products. Many of the sessions will focus on concrete ways to meet federal standards for classroom and teaching performance.

“From the standpoint of our nation’s future, aerospace education is important,” Rice said. “The aerospace industry in the United States is ‘graying.’ Not enough young people are entering those fields, and we face a critical deficiency in aviation and space personnel in this country unless we turn this trend around. That’s why we’re so grateful to have high-level support from so many agencies as we craft a new future for the National Conference on Aviation and Space Education.”

The planning committee will meet again on June 18, 2004 at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C.

Civil Air Patrol, which hosts NCASE each year, is the official civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. CAP is a nonprofit organization with almost 62,000 members nationwide. Its members perform 95% of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. CAP volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counterdrug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members take a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to the almost 27,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for more than 60 years.

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