High school students to launch rockets in Rice Stadium

MEDIA ADVISORY

Jeff Falk
jfalk@rice.edu
713-348-6775

High school students to launch rockets in Rice Stadium

HOUSTON – (June 20, 2019) – More than five decades after President John F. Kennedy gave his famous “we choose to go to the moon” speech at Rice Stadium – and just a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing – 125 high school students participating in Rice University’s Aerospace and Aviation Academy camp will launch prototype rockets in the stadium June 24.

The June 22-July 3 camp is being hosted by Rice’s Glasscock School of Continuing Studies in partnership with Envision.

Who: High school students led by Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut and International Space Station commander and current Rice lecturer in mechanical engineering. For a Rice News profile on Chiao’s career, see https://news.rice.edu/2016/07/07/astronaut-to-incoming-students-success-comes-from-perseverance.

What: Launch of prototype rockets as part of the Rice University Aerospace and Aviation Academy.

When: 2:30-5 p.m. Monday, June 24.

Where: Rice Stadium, on the west side of Rice’s campus. Media can park nearby in West Lot 2.

The Rice University Aerospace and Aviation Academy is an opportunity to spend 12 days in Houston acquiring hands-on career experience and exposure while learning from leading minds in the space industry and gaining unique access to industry facilities.

Members of the news media who want to cover the prototype rockets launches should RSVP to Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

For a map of Rice University’s campus with parking information, go to www.rice.edu/maps.

The Glasscock School offers personal and professional development classes, online and hybrid courses and certificate programs, with additional offerings from the Center for College Readiness, the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, the Foreign Language program, the English as a Second Language program, the Master of Liberal Studies, the Diploma in Liberal Studies, the Master of Arts in Teaching and School Literacy and Culture. For more information, go to http://glasscock.rice.edu.

-30-

Follow the Glasscock School via Twitter @GlasscockSchool.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.