2009 AIAA Foundation Award for Excellence

Founding Director June Scobee Rodgers, Ph.D., accepted the 2009 AIAA Foundation Award for Excellence on behalf of Challenger Center. The organization was recognized for “two decades of inspiration and fostering [students] interest in careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”

Established in 1998, the AIAA Foundation Award for Excellence acknowledges outstanding achievements by individuals or groups in the aerospace community.

In the 2008 AIAA report, Working Together to Build the Aerospace Workforce of Tomorrow, AIAA noted, “Methods should be sought to support, expand, and clone programs like Challenger Learning Centers, which have used space as the ‘spark plug’ to motivate STEM education interest in over five million children.”