Students and teachers from Bellevue, Clyde Hill and Medina are participating in Phase One of the Washington Aerospace Scholars Program at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. The program is a distance learning program with a NASA-designed curriculum covering the history of space exploration, the space shuttle, the International Space Station, the moon and Mars.

Among the 287 talented juniors and teachers from across the state are:

Bellevue High School – Brian Lawrence, Katherine Savard, Gene Yoon, Austin Arechiga, Lorin Ferris, Gloria Lu, Chirag Ved, Rahul Harikrishnan, and Margaret Reilly;

Interlake High School – Matthew Klucher and Gordon Sun;

International School – Han-Chi Fung;

Newport High School – Joshua Yip;

Seattle Preparatory High School – Andrew Russell, Mary Sessler and Michael Neely;

The Overlake School – Luke Marcoe

Thomas Jefferson High School – teacher Tia Thiel.

From January through May, the scholars will complete 10 lessons – submitting quizzes, math solutions, essays, and graphics concerning these topics every other week. Scholars will independently select a topic of interest for a final project combining an essay with a graphic. Based on their scores on the Phase One curriculum, up to 160 of the top performing scholars will be invited to an all expense paid Summer Residency at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Teachers participate as Online Academic Evaluators (OAE) during the Phase I curriculum, and will join students this summer to serve as a Summer Residency Academic Facilitators (SR-AF) during one of the residency weeks.

Washington Aerospace Scholars applications for the 2011-12 program cycle will be available late-summer 2011 here. Participants must be high school juniors, United States citizens and Washington state residents.