Published: November 25, 2008 09:11 pm            

West Vigo Middle School teacher to work with NASA's Office of Education

She is one of 15 Einstein fellows chosen to spend a year serving a congressional office or federal agency

WEST TERRE HAUTE — As a young girl, Diedre Adams looked into the December sky over Florida, watching a rocket carry three men into space.

She wondered what would happen to those Apollo 8 astronauts. Would they encounter aliens when the craft reached the far side of the moon, a place no human had ever seen before that historic 1968 mission?

Adams chuckled at that memory.

“Of course, now I know better,” she said.

Just as Apollo 8 orbited the moon 10 times, Adams’ educational experience has come full circle. Now a veteran science teacher at West Vigo Middle School, Adams is spending the 2008-09 school year working in the NASA Office of Education in Washington, D.C., through a prestigious fellowship program.

As part of that job, she wound up interviewing Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders — the Apollo 8 crew — for the NASA television channel.

Forty years earlier, Adams was about the same age as her West Vigo students, gazing at the Saturn V rocket holding Borman, Lovell and Anders as it lifted off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Her uncle, Robert Hatfield, worked on NASA projects as a rocket scientist for Martin-Marietta. At his invitation, Adams and her family traveled from their home in South Carolina to Cape Canaveral to witness the launches of Apollo 8, 11 and 13.

This month, she met the Apollo 8 team face to face. They left an impression on Adams again.

“They had really good senses of humor. I was really struck by that,” she said. “They had a witty comment for everything.”

That rapport is understandable, given the danger and uncertainty they once experienced together. “They had to trust each other with their lives,” Adams explained.

Meeting those iconic space travelers highlights a breathtaking schedule for Adams, so far.

She’s also — take a deep breath — met three current astronauts, including Suni Williams, who showed Adams around her T-38 jet; delivered materials from the International Space Station to the astronauts; attended meetings at the U.S. Capitol, the Department of Education, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Ronald Reagan Building, the Danish Embassy and the Smithsonian Museums; represented NASA at the National Girl Scouts Convention in Indianapolis; met “Mythbusters” star Adam Savage at the National Science Teachers Association conference in Portland, Ore.; talked with President-Elect Barack Obama’s education consultant; received updates on the Hubble Telescope mission before the general public; and gotten run over (playfully) by a Mars rover.

And that in just two-and-a-half months. Her NASA mission continues through July 31, 2009.

Adams’ agenda in January and February includes trips to science and education conferences in Chicago, New Orleans and Vienna, Austria. She’ll attend a January workshop to become certified to handle lunar material, and perhaps be allowed to borrow NASA’s moon rocks to show here in Terre Haute. Sometime next year, she’ll take a deep-sea cruise on a research vessel.

“This is a great experience,” she said by cell phone from Washington earlier this month, as she prepared to fly to Portland.

The adventure was made possible by the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program. The U.S. Department of Education administers that project, which Congress authorized in 1994, and is managed by the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology. Selected elementary and secondary math, technology and science teachers get to spend a year in the nation’s capital, serving a congressional office or federal agency. She was one of just 15 Einstein fellows chosen this year.

The goal is to connect “real world” educators with the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

Adams is anxious to return to Terre Haute, where she can share experiences, as well as her passion for science, with her students and colleagues.

“Getting [the students] excited about science and math is the major reason” for her Einstein Fellowship with NASA, Adams explained. “There are thousands of jobs here. They don’t have to be an astronaut. They don’t have to be an engineer.” For example, the space agency employs seamstresses, who craft the astronauts’ gear and space suits.

Fittingly, a space suit hangs outside the door of Adams’ office in Washington.

Teaching kids about the space program is different than those days in the 1960s, when Adams and other youngsters joined a world fascinated by man’s first trips to the moon. NASA events don’t top the national news these days. Its most common exposure, besides its own TV channel, come through occasional coverage on the History or Discovery channels.

“So we have to kind of advertise through educational programs,” Adams said, “which is kind of why I’m here — to tell kids about NASA.”

Adams will also become a valuable resource to the Vigo County School Corp. on changes in federal policies such as No Child Left Behind and the America Competes Act, said Liz Burck, program manager for the Einstein Fellowship.

“She will be able to go back and talk within her school district about those trends,” Burck said.

Adams will also turn her eventful year into practical classroom lessons for her students, said Tim Vislosky, principal at West Vigo Middle School. That’s just her style and track record.

“She does things out of the box,” Vislosky said. “She’s a very hands-on teacher.”

She’s been teaching for 30 years. The 54-year-old began her career teaching math and communications to U.S. Army soldiers in Colorado, Kentucky and Germany. Adams later taught at Georgia middle and high schools in Atlanta and Savannah, before moving to Terre Haute eight years ago with her husband, Thomas Adams, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

She and Thomas, known as Dr. Thom on Rose’s campus, came to Terre Haute from Atlanta, where lectures, plays, music and festivals happened almost daily. They found activities here, too, along with a slower pace. In Washington, Adams walks to her apartment at 11 p.m. and the streets are still busy. “It’s like 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” she said, “people are everywhere.”

She misses Thom, who was “very supportive of this opportunity,” their pets, and Terre Haute. “Now I don’t care for the hectic life — I want to go home,” Adams said.

In the meantime, though, she’s got an exciting schedule in her remaining months at Washington, and a pretty good view of that city. From her small apartment, she can see the Capitol four blocks away and the Washington Monument in the distance. She’s only driven her car three times, and typically walks or rides the D.C. Metro system.

On a recent work day, Adams assisted in a video conference with astronauts on the international space station, which allowed kids to ask them questions. The youngsters weren’t the only ones intrigued by that galactic connection.

“It was just fascinating to realize you’re talking to someone that’s going past you at 17,000 miles per hour,” she said.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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