Thanks to the involvement with NASA, OSU's NASA Education Projects office is known more widely across the United States than here on campus. For the next five years, OSU will be the implementation partner with the NASA Kennedy Space Center's Educator Resource Center, which is at the Kennedy Space Center's Visitors Center in Orlando, Fla.

The 5-year contract with the Kennedy Space Center's Educator Resource Center will begin Oct. 1.

The implementation partnership is the newest contract with NASA and is said to bring in $2 million in grants that will give out $500,000 a year, for the next five years. Steve Marks, principal investigator for OSU's NASA Education Projects, said the money will be pushed toward the personnel that will be hired on by OSU for salaries.

Marks said OSU is the regional headquarters for the State of Oklahoma, as the NASA Education Projects for teacher education to schools across Oklahoma.

OSU has an office at all 10 NASA Visitors Centers across the U.S., but there is little publicity for the projects office to allow departments and colleges to get involved at OSU.

However, Christy Lang, the communications specialist for the College of Education, said the College of Education and the OSU NASA Education Projects office go hand-in-hand when it comes to the five grants OSU has with NASA, three of which are up for re-bidding this year.

"Through the four grants we have up and running now, there are about 45 employees working across the U.S. for OSU at the NASA headquarters," Lang said.

Marks said starting Oct. 1, at least five employees are to be hired at the Kennedy Space Center and contracted out through OSU.

OSU has had 40 years of experience working with NASA in educational partnerships. OSU is managing the four other grants from NASA Education including: NASA's Teaching from Space Project, the NASA Explorer Schools Project, the NASA Digital Learning Network Project and the NASA INSPIRE Project that total out to more than $38 million in funding.

The job of the OSU NASA Education Projects is to manage each contract with NASA Education and keep the programs distributed equally to schools and education programs across the U.S.

"This is one of Oklahoma's best kept secrets," Marks said. "The NASA Education department here at OSU is more known around the nation than it is to the state. In 1958, I decided it was my mission to get the NASA education and interest out to everyone, especially young children."

Although the NASA Education Projects Office has little involvement with faculty and students across campus, Marks and his colleagues join with the College of Education, particularly the Science of Education, to put out these programs and curriculum to grade schools around Oklahoma.

Marks said he plans to continue running the NASA Education Projects Office and making the program more known to OSU faculty and students and the importance of NASA.

"Kids love airplanes, rockets and dinosaurs; add the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs and NASA has all three," Marks said.

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