Juniors Bailey Causey and Heath Hadley were recently accepted into the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) program for the 2020-2021 school year.

The program started Oct. 28, 2020 and ends Feb. 24, 2021. During the four month course, students have assigned readings, quizzes, discussions with their peers and activities.

“We’ve taken a pre-course survey as a sort of diagnostic and I didn’t know most of the things on there, which sounds like a bad thing but that means I’ll get to learn a lot through this course,” Causey said.

Juniors from across the country participate in this program and talk with other participants, both about space-related topics and other, less related topics.

“My favorite part has to be the peer interaction,” Hadley said. “It is hard to find a group of like-minded people who are also so diverse. It’s only been a few weeks since we started, but there is already a community behind this and it is honestly so cool to watch and participate in.”

For many, this program represents opportunities to learn about fields of study that they plan to use in their future careers.

“I plan to be either an Environmental Scientist or an Astrophysicist one day, so this program will help me learn more about those field’s and NASA’s work in them,” Causey said.

The program is all online, through a program called Canvas, which is similar to Google Classroom, with discussions, grades and assignments within it.

“We even have a discussion post called the ‘Water Cooler’ where we all chat,” Hadley said.

Although this year is different from years past, it still represents the same dream and goal for the students that are accepted into it.

“This program is something I have been looking forward to doing for a long time, and to me it represents the first step towards achieving my dreams,” Causey said.