NASA Educational Programs Organization Described
As provided by  Cheri Morrow, Education and Outreach Broker/Facilitator for NASA's Office of Space Science


NASA's research and development efforts are currently divided into 5 so-called Enterprises, each of which has an Administrative Office at NASA HQ in DC:
  1. Office of Space Science [e.g. sun, planets, stars, galaxies]
  2. Office of Earth Science [e.g. earth observing from space]
  3. Office of Human Exploration and Development of Space [e.g. space shuttle, space station]
  4. Office of Aerospace Technology [e.g. space planes, new propulsion technology]
  5. Office of Biological and Physical Sciences [e.g. microgravity experiments, plants in space]

The various NASA Centers around the country specialize in one or more of these areas. For example, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena and the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland are best known for their space and earth science programs. The Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are best known for their Human Exploration programs.....and so on. Other NASA centers you may have heard of include: Ames, Dryden, Langley, Lewis, and Marshall, each with their own combination of specialities among the 5 Enterprises listed above.

Each of the NASA Enterprises has a budding education program, with Space Science and Earth Science being the most mature at the current time. These programs coordinate their efforts with NASA's Education Division, which is a division of NASA's Office of Education and Human Resources. The idea is to have one NASA education program, while allowing the coordinated educational innovations of all the Enterprises. One of Education Divisions key programs is the Aerospace Education Specialists (AESP) who are based at each of the NASA Center Education Offices. Each AESPer has two states assigned to them. I believe we already discussed Sue Ellis as your AESPer for Utah. Another of Education Divison's key efforts with which you are probably familiar is the Space Grant program -- there is one in every state, generally HQed at one of the larger universities. The 50 or so Space Grants have varied interests and emphases in undergraduate research opportunities, undergraduate curriculum development, and K-12 outreach.

One of the innovations of the Office of Space Science (OSS) [the one I'm representing] is a Support Network of organizations to help connect interested educational efforts and organizations [like the Utah State Office of Education, museums, planetariums, curriculum developers, etc] to the resources of the space science community. These resources include space scientists themselves, data and imagery, educational materials, research facilities, grants programs, and so on. This OSS Education and Outreach Support Network works with AESPers, Space Grant Colleges, and other NASA education programs, and is currently distributed at 10 organizations across the country, each serving a geographical region and/or space science theme area. The 4 scientific themes of NASA's Office of Space Science are:

  1. Sun-Earth Connection (solar physics, magnetospheric physics, auroral physics, etc)
  2. Solar System Exploration (planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc)
  3. Origins (evolution of stars, planets, other solar systems, galaxies, astrobiology, etc)
  4. Structure and Evolution of the Universe (studies of the universe as a whole, big bang, cosmology, etc).

Here at the Space Science Institute [a small non-profit in Boulder, CO dedicated to excellence in research and education in the space and earth sciences], Cheri Morrow [camorrow@colorado.edu] is the PI for a program that has western region responsibilities in all of the above theme areas. I am called the western region Education and Outreach Broker/Facilitator for NASA's Office of Space Science. Utah is in my region of interest and I am here to support/serve you in ways that we can collaboratively define. The resource directory I referred you to above is one of the new products of the space science [OSS] education effort at NASA.