Seventeen high school juniors from Bellevue have been selected for Phase One of the Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) of the 2011-12 program.

Selected from 297 students from 110 different public, private and home-school organizations who applied last November, accepted students will spend the next five months competing academically for one of the 160 slots in a summer residency session held at The Museum of Flight in June and July.

WAS is a free, competitive, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education program for high school juniors from Washington and is affiliated with NASA Johnson Space Center’s National High School Aerospace Scholars program. Its primary goal is to prepare student for careers pathways in STEM fields using a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum which covers topics such as the history of human spaceflight and the future human exploration of Mars.

More than 78 percent of alumni are pursing a college degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

Accepted students from Bellevue are:

Amir Ali Attar Olyace, Bellevue High School

Daniel Bae, Bellevue High School

Patrick Bigos, Bellevue High School

Grant Hilfinger, Bellevue High School

Richard Xu, Bellevue High School

Sarah Brown, Interlake High School

Isaku Kamada, Interlake High School

Kayla Miller, Interlake High School

Danielle Niemann, Interlake High School

Erik Dekker, Newport High School

Andrew Lovett, Newport High School

Steven Lusby, Newport High School

Andrew Nguyen of Newport High School

Avinash Ram, Newport High School

Emily Zhang, Newport High School

Lauren Brening, Sammamish High School

Alexander Martinez-Forte, Sammamish High School