In early August, UCNJ Union College of Union County, NJ hosted a four-day NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) program for college students from UCNJ, Essex County College, and Norwalk Community College (in Connecticut). The program focused on three missions that are designed to challenge and build student knowledge and skills by focusing on NASA’s mission goals, collaboration, and career pathways.
Participating scholars had the option to learn either online or in-person. With UCNJ hosting the program in-person, students were also able to take part in a robotics competition. Throughout the course of the program, students were asked to create an engineering design solution to perform a task, review and revise their resumes based on feedback from STEM professionals, summarize job shadowing experiences, learn how to apply STEM concepts to future engineering design challenges, and more. The Aerospace Scholars advanced their capabilities in STEM, which will help prepare them for better representation and service in STEM fields.
“UCNJ has been a NASA partner for a decade. We are honored to work with them to inspire the next generation of engineers. This program and the connections these scholars are making will change their lives and open doors for them after they graduate from UCNJ. Our goal is to provide these scholars with a first-class education with experiential learning opportunities. Moreover, we want to help them to graduate on-time and support them through their bachelor’s degree attainment to better position them for a related career with family-sustainable wage jobs,” stated UCNJ’s President Dr. Margaret McMenamin.
This is not the first time that UCNJ has participated in a NASA program. In 2020, the College was selected as one of only two community colleges that were chosen to participate in NASA’s Micro-G Next Challenge Artemis Program. For more information on the College’s NCAS program, go to https://www.ucc.edu/academics/academic-divisions/division-of-stem-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics/stem-ncas/.
As New Jersey’s Community College, UCNJ is a public, comprehensive community college that provides quality, affordable, accessible educational programs to the greater Union County region. It is the first of New Jersey’s 18 two-year colleges, serving both career-minded and transfer-oriented students since 1933. The College offers a wide variety of academic and extracurricular activities. UCNJ provides many experiential learning opportunities such as access to a Bloomberg Business Center, Innovation Center, and Student Research hub. Additionally, students at UCNJ attend one of the top 10 community colleges in the country for 2025 as designated by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. To learn more, visit www.ucc.edu.
