Spirit of Innovation Awards
The Conrad Foundation seeks to effectuate short- and long-term change, and to bring three objectives to fruition:
1. Reinvigorate interest in STEM, placing a special emphasis on groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.
2. Close the education, innovation and overall achievement gaps that render the U.S. schools less competitive on the world stage.
3. Train the innovative workforce that will drive the economy of tomorrow.
The Conrad Foundation also seeks to change how government, industry and academia work together to change the method and the motivation in which students learn STEM. Through our partnerships, we connect the classroom, industry, academia and government to create an immersive learning experience built on innovation, education and entrepreneurship.
About You
About You
First Name
Nancy
Last Name
Conrad
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Conrad Foundation
Organization Website
Organization Phone
832 864 7223
Organization Address
3101 NASA Parkway, Seabrook, TX 77586
Organization Country
United States
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
1‐5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Spirit of Innovation Awards
What change do you want to bring to the world?
The Conrad Foundation seeks to effectuate short- and long-term change, and to bring three objectives to fruition:
1. Reinvigorate interest in STEM, placing a special emphasis on groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.
2. Close the education, innovation and overall achievement gaps that render the U.S. schools less competitive on the world stage.
3. Train the innovative workforce that will drive the economy of tomorrow.
The Conrad Foundation also seeks to change how government, industry and academia work together to change the method and the motivation in which students learn STEM. Through our partnerships, we connect the classroom, industry, academia and government to create an immersive learning experience built on innovation, education and entrepreneurship.
What are the primary activities of your project?
The Conrad Foundation’s Spirit of Innovation Awards (SOIA) presents student participants with a very broad challenge: create an innovative product that can be used to address a real-world problem with a real-world solution which can ultimately be viable in the commercial marketplace.
Students are given a blank slate within several major categories that can include clean energy, aerospace exploration and global nutrition. But they’re not just asked to complete a science project: they’re also required to conduct research to determine their creation’s potential market impact and develop a full business plan.
Utilizing a network of world-class scientists, engineers, academics, business leaders and others, the Conrad Foundation pairs student groups with mentors to make their ideas a reality.
A panel of experts selects the top entries to attend the annual Innovation Summit, hosted at NASA-Ames Research Center, were students present their technologies. There, program participants also have the opportunity to interact to a slate of guest speakers who have been among the foremost science, business and academic leaders in the world.
Each year several student teams are also chosen to go into the “Portal:, where the Conrad Foundation helps students acquire the patents and funding needed to bring their creations to the open market.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
The Spirit of Innovation Awards is the only competition for teams of high school students combining STEM, innovation, entrepreneurship and education to solve real world challenges. Further, it is one of the only programs that actively collaborates with other STEM organizations.
Our students learn design thinking skills and the system of incremental development from idea to design to reality. This competition is an open platform, free and available to all socio economic levels nationwide.
This competition isn’t about proving how many STEM facts students know. It is about taking everything they know, learning more, working with their fellow students, teachers and mentors, to create something commercially viable with large-scale social impact. While we help these students understand the importance of what they are learning, they also have the opportunity to innovate and gain recognition at a very early age for their product designs.
As a result of our program, several of our students received patents and media recognition, interacted with government, industry and academic leaders, and gained the opportunity to commercialize their product ideas. We are not only hosting a program, we are driving a movement. We are giving teachers an exciting and dynamic way to teach STEM, and we are growing the young innovators who will sustain our knowledge-based economy.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
The Spirit of Innovation Awards program reaches all socioeconomic levels and ranges from students from the Navajo Nation to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the number one rated school in the country. Since its inception, our program attracts high school aged students from coast to coast. Roughly one-third of our students are young women, one-third are underserved and one-third are students who enter many competitions.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
The Conrad Foundation is based on the rich legacy of the late Apollo 12 Astronaut and entrepreneur, Charles “Pete” Conrad. The Foundation was created by Pete’s wife, Nancy Conrad, a teacher, education activist and Chairman of the Foundation.
Pete was expelled from a prestigious school in the 11th grade: he couldn’t read and he couldn’t spell. In those days, educators didn’t always recognize dyslexia. His mother took him to a small school where the headmaster saw something special in this young man and took him under his wing. Pete went on to earn a scholarship to Princeton where he became an aeronautical engineer.
He was a test pilot when President Kennedy put out the call for this country to go to the Moon. Pete was accepted to enter NASA’s manned spaceflight program where he flew four missions including Gemini V, Gemini XI, Apollo 12 and Skylab. He was the third man to walk on the Moon and was awarded a Congressional Space Medal of Honor for his rescue of Skylab. Toward the end of his life, Pete was working on the commercialization of spaceflight.
He was pioneer of the past and at the leading edge of the vision of the future. Pete got his moon shot because an educator took him under his wing. Our program is designed to help teachers to take students under their wing, provide mentorship and give students their moon shot.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
Over the course of the past three years of our program engaged more than 1,000 students from a broad socioeconomic demographic nationwide.
Our student teams have received technology patents and recognition from government regulatory agencies and the President, and funding from venture capitalists to commercialize their products. They are featured in national and international media including Fox News, CNN, Elle Girl, MTV Geek, Popular Science and many more. They are also sought after to serve as speakers at national and international industry and academic conferences such as the International Space Development Conference, AIAA conference and TEDxSF. There are former student projects now archived in the Kennedy Library.
Most recently, nutrition category winners from the 2010 Spirit of Innovation Awards developed a nutrition bar meeting the NASA standard for nutrition and use in micro-gravity environment. Their product flew aboard the NASA Shuttle Mission STS 134.
To ensure we are meeting our mission of improving the delivery of STEM education to students and providing quality mentorship opportunities, we survey teachers and students at the completion of the SoIA. Developed by a former student competitor and a NASA education specialist, the surveys are used to assess the success and value of the program as a tool for project-based learning in STEM education. Across the board, both students and teachers agree that the format provided by the Conrad Foundation enhances and improves student interest in STEM education and STEM career opportunities.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
We will take the SoIA competition to a much larger scale through the help of our Challenge Partners and Program Champions. Our partners and champions provide valued connections to mentors, judges, students and future team coaches. Through our partnering plan, we intend to reach thousands of students each year and expand our portal program, which is the pipeline to providing students the opportunity to further develop and patent their products and bring these products to the commercial market.
Currently we are in the process of developing a five-year strategic plan that will fully outline our growth and best practices to further develop our outreach strategies and student programming.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Following the third year of implementing the SoIA competition, we identified three challenges facing the program. First, it was too difficult to orientate our teachers to the program requirements due to the extensive amount of initial content required by the student teams. Second, the submission process was too cumbersome for students to tackle as a first submission. And third, we were limited by the number of submissions we could intake due to the burden on our judges who had to review 10-15 page documents which took upwards of two hours to analyze for each team submission.
Based on this feedback from teachers, students and judges, we refined our submission process. The solution to all of these challenges was to add in a preliminary round that required students to submit a one-page abstract of their proposed product.
With this change, teachers can easily introduce the project to their students using a simple prompt about the program. Students will also be more inclined to be imaginative and submit their ideas since the original abstract is less time consuming and demanding. Being selected for a semi-finalist round gives the students greater incentive to develop their product business plan, marketing plan and graphic representation.
In addition, judges can more easily tackle a greater number of original submissions, where previously each judge could only manage two to three entries, they now can manage upward of 20 -30 preliminary entries. This increases our ability to intake submissions from more students and expands the reach of our program.
Tell us about your partnerships
Because our Foundation is built on the legacy of Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the Moon, our business model for our program is based upon America’s original plan to achieve the “Moon Shot”. To reach the moon, the U.S. went incrementally, through a rich collaboration of academia, government and industry. With this model in mind, our partners include:
• Lockheed Martin Company: our primary industry partner providing funding and mentors
• NASA: a primary partner providing funding, expertise and mentors
• National Science Teachers Association: providing outreach to teachers and students
• Sigma Xi: providing funding and mentors
• Department of State: providing a platform for winning teams to attend the Rio+20 conference
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics: Primary Aerospace Challenge Partner, providing funding, pipeline to judges and mentors
• Museums and Science Centers: providing outreach to communities of parents, teachers and students
• Popular Science Magazine and Space Ref: providing media outreach
• Alliance for Climate Protection: providing expertise and mentors in energy
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$500,001‐1 million
Explain your selections
The Spirit of Innovation Awards program is supported by our category sponsors, generous donations and unsolicited grants. Each year we host at least three challenge categories from aerospace exploration to clean energy, and from cyber security to global nutrition. With the help of corporate sponsors like Lockheed Martin we are able to provide our program at no cost to students and teachers. We also receive smaller corporate donations for challenge awards and student travel stipends from organizations such as Constellation Energy, ComDev, SpaceX, ManSat and Boeing.
NASA Ames Research Center has provided generous in-kind gifts by hosting our annual Innovation Summit and through the voluntary assistance of their talent staff. Additionally, NASA Ames and other NASA centers have provided generous funds to support the continuation of our program.
Friends, family, board members, and other individuals have been strong supporters of our program. Along with monetary gifts, they provide the invaluable resource of volunteering their time and expertise.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
We will offer the SoIA competition to a much larger scale of students through the help of our Challenge Partners and Program Champions. Our partners and champions provide valued connections to mentors, judges, students and future team coaches. Through our partnering plan, we intend to reach thousands of students each year. We also intend to expand our portal program, which is the pipeline to providing students the opportunity to further develop and patent their products and bring these products to the commercial market.
Currently we are in the process of developing a five-year strategic plan that will fully outline our growth and best practices to further develop our outreach strategies and long-range plan for student programming.
Partnerships and Accountability
Please tell us more about how your partnership was formed and how it functions. What specific role does each partner play? What unique resources does each partner bring to the initiative?
The Conrad Foundation established three categories with corresponding criteria to define new and current partnerships:
Category Partners: Each year we have one official partner for each category to provide expert mentors, judge for submissions and opportunities for students such as speaking at national conferences, internships and career opportunities. Current partners include AIAA and Sigma Xi.
Category Sponsors: We have one sponsor for each category that aligns with our mission and is a respected leader in the category field. These sponsors include Lockheed Martin and NASA.
Program Supporters: They are organizations or programs who support our program year after year. We thank them for promoting our program through their networks and being a great reference. We put them on our website and invite them to the Innovation Summit. This year we are looking to Project Lead the Way and NSTA.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
By challenging student teams to create an innovative product in aerospace exploration, clean energy or global nutrition – we catalyze students to discover STEM solutions through their own choices. Students are incentivized to refer to their text books, and ask their teachers questions and to use Conrad Foundation mentors to access advance STEM principles.
Students want to develop ideas to will solve real world problems. Using this method of project based learning has proven to motivate students to find their own answers because they are truly interested, and when they are interested, the information has applications that are clearly understood by the students. In addition, students are required to write a business plan and technical plan to further demonstrate their knowledge.
Examples:
A student team developing a space nutrition bar accessed Conrad mentors to work within the NASA micro-gravity requirements for space travel. Using science, math and technology they developed a technical plan, business plan and graphic representation of their product. After being selected as a winner of the Spirit of Innovation Awards with the help of the Conrad Foundation’s portal they went on to present at National conferences, participate in the 1st White House Science Fair and had their nutrition bar aboard NASA Shuttle Mission STS-134.
Needs
Investment, Human Resources/Talent, Mentorship.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
As an organization, we have the necessary partnerships in place to support the judging, mentoring and media outreach required to make our program success. Our next growth phase requires funding to expand the scale of our program to increase the number of students who participate in our program and the depth of offerings available at the SoIA Innovation Summit.
As we leap to the next level we will hire additional staff to assist in managing our valuable partnerships, teachers, mentors, and most importantly our students.
Each year we have new and returning mentors help students with advanced STEM principles in each challenge category. We always welcome expert mentors to answer student questions through our growing online community.
Offers
Collaboration/Networking, Innovation/Ideas.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
We collaborate with like-minded organizations by providing a free program for students, teachers and mentors. In addition, student teams develop innovative products and ideas by working with mentors and professionals, which can lead to exciting opportunities including internships, patents, speaking engagements and more.
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