Bo's Professional Page

Robert S. Smith

Last Updated: January 15th, 2008

Robert S. Smith
Earth Systems and Space Science
Educational Services

Grant Project and Current Educational Services Websites

Exploring Moon and Mars Geology	Project Geo
Protein Crystals in Space in Florida Schools	Teacher Workshop Activities

Current Research Projects

Western North Carolina Spruce Pine Pegmatites
(website in progress)

North Florida Heavy Mineral Mining
(website in progress)

It seems that I have been involved in teaching in one form or another throughout both my military and public school careers. As a flight instructor in the Navy and Air Force and in almost every aspect of my Navy experience, training and modeling were essesntial factors in learning success. I taught Earth/Space Science, Oceanography, and Environmental Science during my sixteen year career in public school teaching. I taught Earth/Space Science Honors in several forms for the last ten years; first as an Earth Science Lab Instructor at the University of North Florida (UNF) for five years, then to high school seniors as a high level fourth science course, and for the last four years as part of Terry Parker's innovative Freshman Honors Academy. I particularly enjoyed participating an extension activities such as:

Project GEO- Prioject GEO was a collaboration between myself and Dr. Nick Hudyma, a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of North Florida (UNF). This program was intended to enable a highly motivated group of my students interested in a career in science or engineering to get a taste of pure science research or solving an engineering related problem in a university lab setting.
Click on the Project GEO website for more information.

From amy 2005 until May 2006, I worked as an Aerospace Aviation Mentor (AEM) for the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI), I mentored teachers, gave presentations, and conducted teacher workshops in northeast Florida. During that period, I developed a one day workshop on NASA's space exploration initiative "The Earth, Moon, Mars, and Beyond" which includes several lunar and mars planetary geology hands on activities. For more infiormation check out my Exploring Moon and Mars Geology website.

From 1999 through May 31st, 2005, I was the the Program Manager and Instructor for the 'Protein Crystals in Space in Florida Schools' Program. This program was a grant project funded by the Florida Space Grant Consortium (FSGC). During this program, we flew over 100 teacher and student made protein crystallization payload samples via three space shuttle launches to the International Space Station (ISS). The website for this exciting program is: http://florida-protein-crystals-in-space.org. Unfortunately, the grant funding discontinued by FSGC because we lost our payload flight opportunity due to a change in priorities by NASA for ISS missions following the space shuttle Columbia tragedy.

I was a participant in the Florida Explores' Program from 1993 until 2006. Florida Explores' was a weather satellite educational outreach program sponsored by Dr. Paul Ruscher of the Department of Meterology at Florida State University (FSU). As a Florida Explores' teacher, I operated a real time weather satellite ground station in my high school classroom and my students created and maintained the Terry Parker Weather Center Website. Although the FSU Florida Explores' Program is no longer funded, many of the Florida Explores' teachers have continued to network in various educational activities with the support of Dr Ruscher at FSU.

Terry Parker Website and Internet Research Class: My Florida Explores' experience lead to the creation of a small class that exisetd for several years. Students in this class conducted research in various fields using the internet which resulted in the development of several websites. The Terry Parker Space Science Website is one of these websites. Check it out! This class created and and was responsible for maintenance of the Terry Parker High School Website until it the class was disbanded due to class size and funding contraints.

Science Fair Projects: I have superivised several highly motivated students in Science Fair Projects. Descriptions and websites for some of these projects are provided below:

Determining the Composition of Rocks Using Reflectance Spectrometry

The Effect of Varying pH in the Crystallization of Lysozyme

Thaumatin Crystallization in a Magnetic Field

Factors Affecting the Production of Protein Crystals

(This website (front page only available online) was produced by a team of girls from my website design and internet reserach class who were also participants in the Protein Crystals in Space Program. They produced this site as a part of the University of Central Florida College of Engineering Internet Science and Technology Fair Competition for 1999/2000. They were selected as the 1st place winner from over 300 high schools who entered the competition. Unfortunately only the front page of the website remains available.)

Presentations: In addition to numerous prsentations at Florida Association of Science Teacher's annual conferences, here are some of my state and national level professional presentations:

National Science Teachers Association Annual Meeting - April, 2000, Orlando, Florida
Super Computer 98 Conference -November, 1998, Orlando, Florida
Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC 98) -March, 1998, Orlando
Super Computer 97 Conference -November, 1997, San Jose, California

I experimented with augmenting my Earth/Space Science Course with the internet in school year 2001/2002. This is an example of that effort. I found that the website was valuable for students that needed the remediation or to get make-up assignments.

Earth/Space Science Course Website

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