Leland D. Melvin, NASA Associate Administrator for Education, will meet and talk with museum-mentored high school students in a computer-generated, 3-D environment created by students on the Miami Science Museum’s virtual world island in Second Life. Using avatars that they have created, youth will interact with Mr. Melvin’s avatar, who will talk about his passion for science, lend insight into his career path, and answer students’ questions.

Young people interacting with such a powerful role model through this computer- simulated world is a revolutionary new way of making the presentation more engaging, deepening their science knowledge and making the students more comfortable asking questions of the speaker.  The presentation will be broadcast to students in the virtual world and projected in the Science Museum’s Theater so that the public can observe the virtual event and also participate through an avatar.

Leland D. Melvin joined NASA in 1989 as an aerospace engineer at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. He joined the astronaut corps in 1998 and has served as a mission specialist on two space shuttle missions. In 2003, Melvin co-managed the former Educator Astronaut Program, which recruited teachers to become fully trained astronauts in an effort to connect space exploration with students across the country.

Mr. Melvin was named the associate administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in October 2010.  He is responsible for the development and implementation of NASA’s education programs. As a passionate advocate of science education, he has been developing strategies to improve NASA’s education offerings and to assist in establishing goals, processes and evaluation techniques to implement a sustainable and innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) program.  He is a two-time space shuttle astronaut and flew on missions STS-122 and STS-129 in 2008 and 2009, respectively.  Prior to joining NASA, Mr. Melvin played in the National Football League for the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys.

The Girls RISE Museum Network (http://girlsrisenet.org/ works to strengthen the professional capacity of informal science educators to engage and motivate minority girls to explore and pursue science and engineering careers. On May 6-7, teams from the California Academy of Sciences, COSI, Explora, Miami Science Museum, NYSCI, OMSI, Saint Louis Science Center, and Sci-Port met at the Miami Science Museum to explore using virtual world technologies in this endeavor.

Virtual worlds provide an immersive environment where users create a digital character, or ‘avatar’, and navigate through a virtual world, while interacting with real people from around the world. This platform is used by many institutions, such as colleges, universities, museums, libraries and government entities. The Miami Science Museum is exploring strategies to use this unique technology to spark excitement about science and lead young people to think of themselves as someone who is informed about science as well as can make a contribution to science.

Teams participated in an event for high school students in which student and RISEnet avatars met in an “in world” space for a presentation on “Solar Variability and its Impact on Climate Change” by Dr. Joanna Haigh, Physics Dept. Chair, Imperial College, London. Participants then interacted in the real world with the students to learn from them about their experiences with virtual worlds.