Margaret (Peggy) Maher and Dr. Kyle Peck bring space exploration to life for students K-12 with NASA's Aerospace Education Services Project (AESP), managed by Penn State’s College of Education. Through the program, the team led by Peggy and Kyle reach thousands of students and teachers in all 50 states by helping teachers use NASA educational materials to create the next generation of explorers.

The Aerospace Education Services Project strives to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics―or STEM, for short―learning fun with classroom lesson modeling and interactive web-based experiences. Penn State’s program is a resource for teachers as well. AESP’s NASA Educators Online Network (NEON) gives K-12 educators of the STEM disciplines an online learning community, allowing them to bond with scientists, engineers and other teachers to help support their classroom work.

Peggy has an M.S. in Science Curriculum & Instruction from Oklahoma State University and has 18 years of experience teaching secondary science and math in schools on four continents. She has also taught college level biology and biotechnology, and managed a National Science Foundation Biotechnology project. Before coming to Penn State as director of the AESP, Peggy worked as an aerospace education specialist for the project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Kyle is a former middle school teacher who has studied the use of technologies in schools and school reform in his 25 years as a professor at Penn State, and was co-founder of the innovative, technology rich Centre Learning Community Charter School.

Teachers praise the AESP program for helping to present difficult material in an easy to understand manner, and the student programs regularly produce awe-inspiring comments about the wonders of space exploration and the new awareness of possibilities for the technological careers that will drive our nation’s economy into the next generation and beyond.

“The program fully embodies Penn State’s mission to bring quality educational programs to the people of Pennsylvania and the nation,” says Richard Varner, aerospace education specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. And Peggy and Kyle are leading the way.

To learn more about the AESP program, visit http://aesp.psu.edu/.