May 4, 2015

I spent two great days at the Mescalero Apache School at their second annual student STEM conference. I was invited by Mike Montoya to give a series of climate change talks to a bunch of high schoolers from all over the region. The students were mainly from tribal schools and some came from as far as Flagstaff and Cuba, NM. The fair started off with a speech from retired Commander John Herrington who flew on the Shuttle Endeavour (STS-113) and did a space walk to install parts of the International Space Station. The students and staff at the school did a great job in running the conference and made it enjoyable.

In total I gave 7 talks and answered a bunch of questions. More than half of them said that they had a course in environmental sciences at their school. I tested them on their knowledge of basic things like the greenhouse effect and while most of them knew of it, the majority couldn't give any details on how it worked. Hopefully I improved their knowledge by the end of the conference.