Glenville State College has announced the upcoming events for The JASON Project, an internationally recognized science program for middle-school students and an affiliate of Sea Research Foundation, Inc and National Geographic Society. They will be traveling to Ritchie, Randolph, Nicholas, and Clay counties on November 16th and 17th.

Leading the school presentations, for fifth through eighth graders, will be Dr. Larry Shadle from the National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown, West Virginia and host researcher of The JASON Project energy curriculum, Operation: Infinite Potential. JASON pairs real scientists in the field with student and teacher ‘Argonauts’ to create experience-based science curricula. Dr. Shadle will be joined by the National Argonauts Melinda Woods-Carpenter, Sarah Mullins, and Nautilus Live Educator-at-Sea Mollie Ferguson.

The JASON Project will be at Ritchie County Middle School and Tygarts Valley Middle School (Randolph County) on Tuesday, November 16th and at Summersville Middle School (Nicholas County), Big Otter Elementary School (Clay County), and Clay County Middle School on Wednesday, November 17th.

Teacher Argonaut Melinda Woods-Carpenter, an 8th grade science teacher at Summersville Middle School, and Student Argonaut Sarah Mullins, a ninth grader at Ritchie County High School, were selected to participate in an internship with The JASON Project. Woods-Carpenter is one of the one-hundred twenty-eight West Virginia teachers who have received JASON training at Glenville State College, and Mullins is one of over four-thousand students that have been exposed to JASON curriculum by these teachers. Woods-Carpenter and Mullins have been learning from expert host researchers in the field and will be featured in the upcoming JASON curriculum units, Climate, Forces & Motion and Space.

Nautilus Live Educator-at-Sea Mollie Ferguson, a Tygarts Valley Middle School teacher, was selected to take part in immersion learning in the Mediterranean Sea on the E/V Nautilus after JASON Project founder Dr. Robert Ballard visited GSC last year. Ferguson studied and hosted live web events from the E/V Nautilus off the coast of southern Turkey this past October and will share her once in a lifetime experience with the students.

The JASON Project will be holding teacher workshops at Glenville State College November 8th – 10th as well. For more information about The JASON Project, contact GSC JASON Project Science Coordinator Jessica Dorr Perkins at Jessica.Perkins@glenville.edu or (304) 462-6025.