Expanding Your Horizons Conference

Register Now for Feb. 24 Gathering for Girls in Grades 6-8

Ginger Kerrick, a NASA Mission Control flight director for 13 International Space Station and five joint Shuttle missions, will be the keynote speaker for the 26th Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Conference at Spring Forest Middle School. Registration is now open for young women in grades 6-8. The conference will be held on Saturday, Feb. 24.

In a modern way, Kerrick is a kind of “Hidden Figure” movie character, one of the unsung women located behind the space capsules or floating space station who make life possible for astronauts circling the Earth.

The daylong conference is sponsored by the West Harris County branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), which plays a key role in providing career information and role models for middle school girls.

During its annual conference, professional women associated with AAUW share their enthusiasm, career information, educational requirements and salary levels for scientific, technical and financial careers with hundreds of girls, parents and teachers.

“These creative people don’t lecture kids, but involve them in various ways to create hands-on experiences in every one of the conference workshops. The message to our middle school girls is that there are both personal and monetary rewards for taking math and science in middle and high school,” reports AAUW’s KarenJean North.

“Our goal is to inspire young women to study science, technology, engineering and math so they can reach their dreams. Ginger Kerrick will share how she reached her dreams,” North also said.

Growing up, keynote conference speaker Kerrick dreamed of being either a basketball player or an astronaut. While she is not an astronaut today, each International Space Station mission astronaut “is taking a little piece of [her] with them” into space because of her Mission Control support.

Kerrick became the first non-astronaut Capsule Communicator (CapCom), a NASA Flight Control position that relays information from Mission Control to the astronaut crew flying high above Earth. With 25 years of experience, she is now providing leadership in development, testing and certification of new spacecraft to restore U.S. launch and landing capabilities involving the International Space Station and regions beyond low-Earth orbit.

Through hard work and perseverance, Kerrick won academic scholarships. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degree in physics, an area of study that demands mental focus, acuity and deep thinking skills.

Read more about Ginger Kerrick’s life and watch her NASA video here:
https://women.nasa.gov/ginger-kerrick/

Read Ginger Kerrick's Bio here.

Download Expanding Your Horizons brochure here.

Learn more about Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics:
http://aauw.azurewebsites.net/

Register for the Feb. 24 Expanding Your Horizons Conference:
http://aauw.azurewebsites.net/registration.html