Physics department head involves students in hands-on research projects by Evelyn Boswell Science fiction, as much as anything, contributed to William Hiscock's interest in gravitational waves, black holes and space science. The head of the Montana State University physics department, director of NASA's Montana Space Grant Consortium and recent winner of an international medal for space education grew up reading books like Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein. He also lived in southern California where some of his neighbors built the Saturn V rockets that were headed for the moon. While becoming an Eagle Scout, he became friends with a fellow scout whose father had worked for the famed rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. "That was certainly inspirational," Hiscock said of those early days. Hiscock came to MSU 20 years ago, and he focused on the most fundamental questions of the universe. His personal research continues to center on theoretical physics, but in the past 15 years, he has involved hundreds of students in hands-on projects through the Montana Space Grant Consortium. Montana students have sent high-altitude balloons into the upper levels of the atmosphere. They've conducted experiments in near-weightlessness over the Gulf of Mexico. They've built a tiny satellite--the first ever built in Montana --that will be launched into orbit from Kazakhstan. They've sent experiments into space. They've shared the wonders of Mars Rovers and the Sun with thousands of K-12 students around the state. "Bill's passion for space education lives through his exemplary leadership of the Montana Space Grant Consortium," said Diane D. DeTroye, acting manager of NASA Space Grant and EPSCoR Programs. "Bill's influence and vision extend far beyond this campus and the state to encompass the impact he has had at the national level in space education." Hiscock's work in the Montana Space Grant Consortium earned him the Frank J. Malina Astronautics Medal from the International Astronautical Federation, according to NASA officials who nominated him. The medal that recognizes excellence in space education was presented Oct. 8 during the organization's 55th annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. The letter informing Hiscock of his award spotlighted three Montana Space Grant programs that contributed to his selection. One is the Space Public Outreach Team that hires MSU undergraduates to visit K-12 classrooms to explain the latest developments in space. So far, approximately 150 undergraduate students have given presentations to 27,000 students across Montana. The second program has sent seven teams of Montana undergraduates to the Johnson Space Center in Texas to fly on a KC-135 astronaut training aircraft. One of those teams was the first tribal college team in the nation to fly on the aircraft affectionately known as the "vomit comet." The KC-135's flight path creates temporary weightlessness so students can conduct experiments in space-like conditions. The third program sends undergraduates to NASA academies during the summer. Fourteen Montana students--equally split between men and women--have been accepted into the academies over the years, Hiscock said. Donald Sams, a student at Salish Kootenai College, was the nation's first Native American student to attend a NASA academy. Academy students spend the summer at the Goddard Space Flight Center or the Ames Research Center. "This is an extremely selective program," Hiscock said. "They take 16 or 18 students a year at each of those two locations from the whole country. They are looking for the future leaders of NASA. Montana is one of the top four states in providing students to the academies, demonstrating the quality of our undergraduates." Hiscock's goal is to create opportunities for Montana's undergraduate students so they can actively participate in space missions instead of being mere spectators. He is presently leading a national effort with NASA to send the first space probe designed and built by students to Mars. He is involved with NASA's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission, which will be launched around 2014 to observe and measure gravitational waves.