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by Cameron McPherson Smith and Chuck Sullivan The MARS-ICE project is designed to stimulate high-school-age students to think creatively about the human exploration of Mars. This page provides general and specific information to help you use the assignments we have created. As educators ourselves (Chuck Sullivan at Portland Community College and Cameron M. Smith at Portland State Univeristy and Linfield College), we know that each teacher has a different style. Rather than suggesting a rigid framework, here we provide a set of thought-provoking assignments which are flexible enough to be integrated into existing teaching agendas and schedules. These assignments range from fiction-writing assignments to projects in expedition planning and the creation of visual art. We generated this wide variety of assignment topics because it is important to us not to exclude students who feel that Mars exploration is only a topic for science classes. Mars exploration and colonization will be a cooperative human endeavor of many disciplines, and this should be made clear to students. All assignments, commentary and supporting material are available either on these pages, or as a single, 49-page PDF FILE. Please feel free to contact us for any clarification, using the contact link above.
General Goals
We hope to achieve four general goals in this project:
To achieve these goals we have designed assignments which discuss the colonization of Mars not as a distant pipe-dream, but something that is entirely possible today. We also present Mars exploration as a human endeavor that can be engaged in by anyone: one does not have to be a 'rocket scientist' to be interested. It is humans who will colonize Mars, and those humans will succeed and fail, make art, live and die, solve old problems and have new problems, just as we do here on Earth. This is not escapism, but an attempt to move our species one small step into a new, larger habitat: the proverbial Cosmic ocean. Like members of the Mars Society, we feel this is not a fantasy or an escape, but a very real and important project. The Founding Declaration of the Mars Society is a good introduction to the concept.
One of the ways we hope to keep student attention is through the daily monitoring of the expedition progress. Using the 'tracking' link above, students can monitor Cameron's progress every day, and thereby be reminded of their projects daily. Since the trek may last from three to five weeks (it is very hard to predict how long it will take), it might be a good idea to have the students do several assignments on a week-long scale. For example, each student may do one writing assignment and two other assignments over a period of four weeks. Naturally your own schedule will dictate the entire interface of this project with your classes.
Assignment Goals and Discussion
Teacher guidelines for each assignment are available in the following links:
Project Compilation
Assignment projects may be submitted to us for archiving on a CD, as PDF files. This CD, 'MARS-ICE PROJECT 2004' will contain all submissions as a record of the imaginative approaches to Mars exploration from these students. The CD will be made freely available on request, and will be distributed automatically to all teacher participants at the end of the project. Thus, students will be able to see their work archived as a record of thier thought and action. The CD will also accompany the official Expediton Report submitted to the Expedition Advisory Centre of the Royal Geographical Society, London for permanent storage.
Assignments sent for compilation will be collected in electronic format. They can be sent as email attachments. Writing should be sent as plain text or MS WORD files, and graphics as scanned .jpeg or .gif files.
Competition and Prizes
Assignment projects may be submitted for a series of awards which will be awarded for the best submissions in the following categories:
Best Writing (one award per writing assignment):
Submissions must be sent as hard copies postmarked by 15 April 2004. Submissions must include student's name, school name, teacher's name and contact information as well as category of award applied for. Submissions are to be sent to
Cameron McPherson Smith
Be sure to send copies rather than originals: we cannot be responsible for items lost in the mail. Judging will occur between 15 April and 19 May 2004. Winners will be announced on 20 May 2004. Submissions cannot be returned; again, send copies rather than originals.
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