Astronaut Sally Ride aims to fuel girls

Astronaut Sally Ride aims to fuel girls’ passion for science at Oct. 28 festival

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

The Sally Ride Science Festival for fifth- to eighth-grade girls will be held 11 a.m.-4:15 p.m. in the courtyard of Rice’s Engineering Quadrangle Oct. 28.

Designed to encourage girls to pursue careers in math, science and engineering, the festival will feature a talk by astronaut Sally Ride, discovery workshops for girls and presented by local scientists and engineers, workshops for parents and teachers on ways to support girls’ interests in science and math, and a street fair with booths, hands-on activities, food and music.

The festival is the brainchild of Ride, who in 1983 became America’s first woman in space when she served as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Challenger.

After the 1986 Challenger disaster, Ride served as a member of the presidential commission that investigated the accident. When the inquiry ended, Ride was assigned to NASA headquarters as a special assistant to the administrator for long-range and strategic planning. In 1989, Ride became a University of California–San Diego professor of physics and director of the California Space Institute. In 2001, she founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, to pursue her longtime passion of motivating girls and young women to pursue careers in science, math and technology. The company creates entertaining science programs and publications for upper-elementary and middle-school students and their parents and teachers.

Advance registration for the festival is required and costs $18. The registration fee includes the talk, workshops, lunch and the street fair. Need-based scholarships are available.

To register, visit <www.sallyridefestivals.com/06rice1028>.