North Seattle College has friends in unexpected places—like Blagoveshchensk, Russia.
Tracy Furutani, a physics instructor at North and the faculty advisor for the Rocketry Club, has been working on fostering a collaboration between North Seattle College and Amur State University in Blagoveshchenk.
For years, the North Seattle College Rocketry Club has been entering an annual international rocketry competition in New Mexico (http://www.soundingrocket.org/what-is-irec.html). The club members spend the school year researching, designing, and building a rocket that will blast to an altitude of 10,000 feet at the competition in June.
This year, for the first time, the rocket (named ‘Pele’) will carry a payload designed and built by the Payload Club at Amur State University (see their announcement at https://www.amursu.ru/en/news-and-events/news-en-31.01.2019/).
Pulling off a technical partnership this complex takes a lot of work and creative thinking. The NSC Rocketry Club has been coordinating with the ASU Payload Club via Skype chat.
In April, Mr. Furutani is traveling to Blagoveshchensk along with the president of NSC, Dr. Brown. They’ll get to meet the students and faculty of the Payload Club and talk about the possibility of future partnerships.
While there, Mr. Furutani will also talk to the Rocketry Club. However, he’ll be on the opposite end of the Skype session! The exact date and time of the Skype chat have not been set yet, but it will happen around April 15. Contact the Rocketry Club if you’d like to attend. All students are welcome. This adventure started last year, when Dr. Brown traveled to Russia in a Fulbright Scholar program that brought American and Russian community college leaders together to discuss how to best serve their students (https://news.northseattle.edu/president-selected-for-fulbright).
Kate Tanski
Student Cabinet Member
NSC Student Leadership Blog 