ALTOONA, Wisconsin USA -- I need some immediate help from NAR members on our Team America Challenge event in five simple, but terribly effective ways:

1. Call or visit as many local high schools and teachers and make them aware of the Team America Challenge.
2. Volunteer to help us build an email directory of teacher contacts in schools by the middle of September.
3. Sign up to act as a "mentor" to a team or teams.
4. Become an observer for a team's qualification flight.
5. Open your launch site and local launch to a team needing to make practice or qualification flights.

During the school year that is just beginning we are co-sponsoring the Team America Rocketry Challenge, a nation-wide rocket contest for high school teams. The Challenge offers a serious "rocket science" challenge to high school students who are making important life choices about what to study in college. And it offers huge prizes ($59,000 total) for the top 4 teams, funded by the aerospace industry. We've received endorsements from NASA, the USAF, and just about every education association in the U.S. Full Team America details can be found elsewhere at the NAR website, or visit http://www.rocketcontest.org.

It is a win-win for everyone involved, but you must be involved to win.

What help do we need?

First and most urgently, we need help in getting the word out to high school teachers.

Working with our co-sponsors in the Aerospace Industries Association, we are getting publicity in a wide variety of educator publications. By the end of the year, we will have promoted this NAR project more heavily in print than any project in the history of the NAR. Even with this tremendous exposure, the most effective form of publicity is direct contact.

You, the NAR member, can do two, simple, quick things to directly communicate with teachers and students in the field:

Call or visit as many local high schools and teachers as you can.

Tell them about the event. Encourage them to enter. Contact the local school district office and ask them to assist you in getting the word out to teachers. Your direct contact will have the maximum impact on a local teacher. You can obtain a summary of the Challenge at:

http://www.nar.org/TAguidelines.html

or the complete handbook at:

http://www.nar.org/TAhandbook.pdf

Volunteer to help us build an email directory of teacher contacts in schools.

We need to get the word out to teachers as soon as possible, preferably by mid-September. Working with our Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) partner, we've collected sources for teacher email addresses. We need those sources researched on the Internet for 14 states. Doing each state takes 5 to 15 hours, depending on size. This project is urgent and has an immediate deadline in order to be most effective. If you can volunteer to help, please contact our Team America Manager (and Vice President), Trip Barber at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , soon!

Secondly, as teams from around the U.S. enter the Team America Challenge, we need local NAR Senior members to do three jobs to assist these high school students.

The senior member can act as a "mentor".

Mentors are assistants to the Team America Challenge, advising a team on where to obtain rocket materials, where to fly, how to do basic construction techniques, etc. While you can't assist in the design process itself, you can be a valuable source of information about basic rocketry. Here's your chance to shine as the local rocketry expert and have a ton of fun doing it!

Senior members can volunteer as a "qualification flight observer".

Each Team America team has to do an official, NAR-observed "qualification flight" between now and March 9, 2003. The score obtained on the local qualification flight is reported to Team America HQ, and the teams with the best 100 scores nationwide are invited to attend the final head-to-head "flyoff" near Washington, DC, on May 10-11, 2003 to compete for the big prizes.

Members and Sections can offer use of their launch sites and sessions for teams to come out and do practice flights.

You and your local section members get a chance to do an excellent outreach that can bring in new members and generate local publicity for your club. You'll also get to see some interesting design work by an highly energized local team. And we all know that seeing and flying new rockets is an excellent way to have more fun at your field!

We have about 70 NAR Senior member mentors and 30 sections signed up already, but we need more. If you or your section can be involved in any or all three of these jobs, please contact Team America Manager Trip Barber at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

Finally, there is a potential financial benefit to NAR members who participate in this program.

For those members who itemize deductions on their tax returns, your mileage, i.e., the distance you drive in support of Team America, can be deducted as a charitable contribution to the NAR. You will need to keep a record of the date and miles traveled in conjunction with your Team America work in order to qualify. Your tax software or your tax preparation professional can provide full details about this deduction.

In summary, I need your help in five ways:

1. Call or visit as many local high schools and teachers and make them aware of the Team America Challenge.
2. Volunteer to help us build an email directory of teacher contacts in schools by the middle of September.
3. Sign up to act as a "mentor" to a team or teams.
4. Become an observer for a team's qualification flight.
5. Open your launch site and local launch to a team needing to make practice or qualification flights.

The NAR is involved because Team America is an excellent opportunity for us to formally link the NAR and education in a way that's exciting and fun, both for the students and NAR members involved in the Challenge. Already, Team America has given the NAR opportunities to explore more ways to use rocketry in education. Our contacts with major national educational associations has expanded even at this early stage of the Challenge. We have an unparalled opportunity to secure a leadership position for the NAR in American technical education with this effort.

To those who have already signed up, my sincere thanks.

To those of you just getting this news, I hope you'll join the fun and excitement of this tremendous educational outreach project by volunteering in one or more of the ways outlined above.

Who knows? Maybe your outreach will result in "your team" making it all the way to the top.

Mark B. Bundick,
President National Association of Rocketry