Fantastic. Well good evening. I would like to call the Randolph Technical Career Center board meeting to order. Our first order of business is to welcome any guests that may be here. Looking around I see all friendly faces so we will move right on and turn the meeting over to Felicia to talk about staffing programs and facility updates. Sure, sure. So let me just turn on my camera so you can all see me. Here we are. So this year we had another year with a fair amount of turnover and we welcome to our staff Greg Hance who is our pre-tech exploratory instructor. He was a local electrician in the area but also a school teacher. Clint Wilde who is our culinary arts and hospitality instructor. He comes to us from the, oh what's it called? It's right in the corner cornerstone. So he was the chef there. Kristi Arguin who is our new special needs coordinator and she comes to us from Williamstown. Peter Boucher who is our electrical technology instructor. Jenny Angle our mathematics instructor. She actually did our long-term subbing position last year. Loved it and is going to get her license and wants to be a math teacher. TJ Sheltra is our English and Humanities instructor. He also did a long-term subbing stint with us last year and stayed on with us. We have Randy Clark who has come back to our district to be a mechanical core aid for durified agriculture and automotive. We have Marie Conley who is our CTE school counselor for one year while Jen Joles is taking one year leave of absence. We have Brian Kippen who is our new industrial design and fabrication instructor and currently the one position that is outstanding is our dental position. I was lucky enough to secure an amazing dentist Lydia Gleason who is filling in. She would be qualified to teach the program if she accepts the position. We're in negotiations right now. But she really wants to get out into the clinical world so I'm not sure if that's going to happen but we'll talk about that maybe at this point. The the drawback for this position is that it requires the person to have a CDA which is the dental assisting licensure plus a bachelor's and if you know anything about that field most people that have a CDA or a dental assisting license do not generally have a degree. So that's a little challenging and is presenting us with some problems. So we're gonna have to figure out what our plan is if Lydia decides not to accept the position and we can't find a qualified candidate. The funds for that position are through a time grant so that does not cover long-term subbing so therefore it is more than likely that the program would need to close for a year until we could regroup and and get that back up and running. We have five or six young ladies in the program who are super excited to be there so I really really would hate for that to be the option that we end up having to go with. We have reached out to every license CDA in Vermont. Yep, we wrote them cold cold letters just saying what you doing? So we'll see how that pans out. So that's staffing updates really positive start to the year I think our staff are really excited to be working together kids came back ready to learn. So no new programs all the programs that we had last year what we have this year and no major facilities updates other than the dental lab that was the big one this summer and I think with that that's probably good on that subject. I have a question though so if the dental program was ceased to exist on this campus could those four or five students enroll in a in another program at another school? They could they could either return to their partner school or they could elect to choose a different program that has openings at the Tech Center and there are a few of those as well. As far as other dental programs there's only a one other one for their age group and it's up in Essex. So that would be kind of a hike for them. Okay. Any other questions on that piece? So the dental lab is complete now? The dental lab is complete and operational. But we just need an instructor. Now we need an instructor. Yes. Is there any other recruiting methods that you could use to get the information out there? I mean the face look would be wonderful. To be able to get a little bit more out there that way we like we said we wrote some letters to all the licensed CDAs in Vermont so I mean aside from looking for the New Hampshire ones I suppose that's an option as well. There were some in the hands on the list. I was just thinking if anybody's looking to relocate to the area maybe I mean you got a great video teacher from Ohio's. Wyoming. So do we need to branch out a little bit in the surrounding states with some either social media advertising or letters to see if anybody wants to relocate up here? I did reach out to the Dental Association they were putting feelers out as well so I'm trying all these different avenues we'll see if they can out. What type of hoops do we have to just want to have to jump through to change the criteria? Well it's an interesting question Sam. It's really about the accreditation and it's not so much about the qualifications to be a tech teacher. Lydia would meet that and many of the CDAs in the area would meet that but for the CODA approval for the program in order for kids to actually get CDA approved or licensed that those are the requirements of that so that's above me. I was thinking too one of the questions that it sounds like you're meeting with Ruth tomorrow or sometimes Monday. It might be worth asking if those requirements are as stringent as they are because of the fact that it's grant funded. Sometimes the federal grants have pretty explicit ties about what high quality means in terms of the person that you hire so there might be a way to shift that funding to a different program put the dental program under the regular budget and then the requirements may not be as stringent. I'm glad you mentioned it because it triggered that thought. And the other thought that I had too was the kids need to walk away with either a tier two credential or they need to have dual enrollment opportunities. I'm not sure why if that's how strict we need to be with that. I mean granted we want our kids to get the CDA so that's the ultimate goal but if it meant getting the program up and running could we do that for a couple years and then move into the accreditation process. My guess is if this were locally funded it may not be a stringent. It would not be an issue. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's where we're talking to Ruth. It definitely is. Can we just move on to the next agenda? That'd be great. Thank you. All right. Recruitment, enrollment and retention. So currently do you have a current number? 166 students. 166 students. We started the year with 177 to put that into context. Two years ago when I began we started with 105. We are maxing out. A lot of our programs are just about at capacity which is awesome but our building is also maxing out in that capacity so that's the stretch and we'll talk about that a little bit when I go through my next when I go to the CLNA report about needs that our industry needs for programming but we just do not have the facility space for. We are gearing up right now to get into recruitment for next year believe it or not. That starts pretty early and so in October we'll start heading out. Our food truck is up and running and it's at the temperature fair this weekend so that'll be fun. I'm excited to see it there. That's another little strategy but at the same time we're hoping to take that to the partner schools again like we did last year and feed the kids feed the sophomores and talk to them about our programs so we're gonna up our game a little bit this year. So before we go on any questions on recruitment or retention so keep on going. Alright let's see. Professional development focus so we have quite a few things that we're working on this year. I think the major one for the Center is to continue to align our programs to the state proficiencies that have been accepted for CTE and so we're doing scope and sequence which we started last spring and we're gonna be working on that through PD time this year. We're also as a staff gonna be looking at mental health first aid so every staff member will be able to assist kiddos and it just became obvious last year with the needs that were out there that we needed this training. So those are two major focuses. Gary do you want to chime in? I'm forgetting something. So without further ado this part is gonna be a little bit long so I'm gonna just apologize. I'm gonna take over the screen and display. That's alright. Okay. Is everybody able to see that? Yes. Okay. So the comprehensive local needs assessment is required by every tech center in order to apply for Perkins funding which is about 125,000 for our school and it's also a really good way for us to just look at things that are going well, what programs are of quality, areas we need to improve and so this is a pretty in-depth process. That's why I'm only getting to present this to you now but I want to just kind of hit the highlights of what we found from this process. So student performance is one of the things that they ask us to look at and I think if you look at some of the stats to the left, 100% of our kids do graduate and 96% of those have a good post-secondary plan or placement where our weaknesses are in the academics and that's something that I know we noted last year in our board meetings and it continues to be a challenge. Only 23% of our students are proficient in ELA and 28% in math and only 10% in science and I guess just to kind of tell you some of the things we've done already to remedy this, the state of Vermont has adopted for all tech centers the work keys curriculum which will be integrated into our ELA and our math programs. That is a very systematic math program that kids can take an initial test, they can test out of areas they already are proficient in but it takes them through work that in the areas that they're not proficient in. So there's that piece that we've implemented. We also have science being integrated into our programs this year. So we're hoping that will help but again that's an area that needs to continue to be looked at and just as a reminder we're the 165 students we have one English teacher and one math teacher. So you can guess where I'm going with that one eventually. So we're going to need some staffing. Most of our kids so just before I change slides a lot of our kids are in tier two IRC's in many programs and then post-secondary credits. We have about 69 college credits that were issued last year but that was within three programs. So not necessarily across the board. What were the three barriers? Oh did I say it here? No. I did not. It was education services, criminal justice and cyber security and health careers. All right. So also with student performance you know they're looking at our non-traditional student rate. We've always prided ourselves in having a pretty good rate for females in programs that are non-traditional to their gender. What is very clear is that we haven't really put as much effort and work into getting boys into programs that are non-traditional to them. So that would be like health careers, dental assisting and education. So those are some areas where we need to think about our strategies a little bit and making sure that they have the opportunities that the girls are having. We do have middle school girls in for a challenge day which is put on by Vermont Works for Women. We also had a summer camp last summer. It's the first time in I don't know how many years which was a hit and allowed kids to try different career paths. In terms of special populations and student from different genders, races and ethnicities the data shows that as far as classroom performance they're keeping it par with their peers. Where there is a discrepancy is in the academic testing. When they take a work use test you can see that there's significantly lower scores and so that's an area where I'm concerned because we need to figure out where the where the discrepancy is in terms of what they're learning in program and the test. So something we'll be needing to look at. The labor market is one of the areas that we study as well for this and that is just to ensure that our programs are in line with what the industry needs are and in doing the labor market research it was very clear that every program that we offer has a growing industry. So that's everything from education, culinary, health and dental all the way to advanced manufacturing. The one with the highest level of growth is actually culinary. So something to think about. So I think we're doing a really good job kind of keeping our programs in line with what's needed for our community. I don't feel we have any programs that are not which is a great thing. That's one of the things they're looking for. They also want to know that there are actually positions in the industry for these pathways and so you do a quick indeed search and you can see that for every one of these pathways there are positions available. The one area of our labor market where we do not have a program is the plumbing and HVAC and frankly we don't have space for it. I don't know where we would put it right now. So it's a bit of a dilemma but that is one program that I think is a need in our local economy and we can't provide that. Students that one of the questions asked students in industry that are thriving what were the things that they did in their time with us. And the thing that we've noted is that the kids that participate in the CTSOs and the work based learning placements who obtained the industry credentials who obtained college credits those are the kids that are out there thriving because they have those professional skills that they're needed. So I think that's important and it's a good reason why it's really important that every program has these opportunities for kids. So I think all of our 12 programs meet the qualifications and again we've already talked about dental so program size scope and quality this asked our teachers to take a look at their programs and reflect on a lot of different factors and one of the major things that was obvious through all of the work that I sifted through is obviously enrollment has increased from 105 in 2020 to 170 this fall many programs near capacity and there aren't any real areas that are declining. So I think we're in a good place there. Dental just a reminder that it is grant funded and so that's part of the reason why we're not sure where that's going to go at this moment. Weightless really only exist in a few programs at this moment auto is at capacity and has a waitlist. Diesel did I believe they're near capacity now with some ads this week. Health careers electrical and construction those are the five programs that regularly max capacity. So I think the point here is you know in order to meet the needs of the kids that are coming here we're getting the point where we almost need to expand and so just something to kind of put out there as we think about facilities. One thing that we talked about last year which was clear it was going to be outside of our budget at that time was a building out back that would house construction a new plumbing program and electrical. Now that was like a five million dollar project and so we kind of put the brakes on that for the moment. One other thing that was brought to my attention is when the building was initially designed it was designed to be a two-story building. So it actually has the structural capacity to have a second floor on it and the RTCC wing and we could potentially put the academics and the programs that do not have shops upstairs and that would also give us capacity if we stay in this building. If you have to do a second building is the campus all zoned. The second building out back. I don't know how far we got with that. We had plans drawn up but I don't know that's kind of in the facility's hands as far as that piece of it. There was a building there at one point. There was yes the old Raven building was there. They hadn't done I forgot what they call it the water. Soil assessment. Water runoff surveys anytime you have you're taking up space where water can't get into the ground there's a special survey. That was done but I don't know if that's all that would be required at this point. I'd have to talk about the facilities. There's such a need for the trays. Would there be any grant money or businesses that would put money towards building such a facility. So the possibility since the question came up was going to talk a little bit about the superintendent's report is we're in an interesting place kind of in the state. Right. There was the study group that got together to take a look at the buildings across the state see what condition they're in and for the legislature to come back up to this this this session and decide hey you know we got some real needs here. This is an approximate amount of money that we need to put aside to help you know kind of subsidize some of the work that needs to happen across the state. So the hope is is that that happens and that in our case is a good thing for two other reasons. One is because we will be going through our PCB testing that's required in October and we have two buildings that are old enough to require testing that have a likelihood anything that's earlier than you know 1978 or 79 whenever it is is probably has the PCBs in it and that's this building complex and that's Brookfield and so we're going to have some information about that that might push us in the direction of new construction. The other piece that was interesting is when they did the study they rated this building as close to the end of its useful life. Again they were very good to point out that yeah if folks are doing proper maintenance replacing things they need to you can keep stuff going indefinitely but as far as the state was concerned they rated this building in the state as the one that is the closest to the end of its useful life. So if we put those three things together what we may be looking at and I'm starting discussion tomorrow night with the community at the open forum is you know if we're looking at potentially getting some matching funding from the state can we look at rebuilding this complex. You know that will allow them to have their building in trade center that will allow us to modernize this building. There are some other things that have been on the agenda that folks have been talking about as we're building our science program is it would allow potentially for a STEM Academy to be built and because we're central in the state and this is a little bit more high flying. We're a perfect location to do state championships and things athletically so it would be nice to have a rub corner to our field with lights and have people come in we put up the big fences around it and you know we charge the people the $15 entrance fee to come in and use the site which is what happens in those states. So those are the kinds of things that we're discussing so there is the potential for a new building tomorrow it's just to get the initial appetite of the community for the possibility. It's essentially located it's not just for sports but for any academic and yeah conferences but even just having kids come up from White River or Barry Montpelier it's just so nicely essentially located. So the STEM STEM Academy if it were a separate building you know again high flying idea as we've talked about the possibility. Yeah it's a classroom space but maybe it's also a museum where other towns can send their kids to kind of come in you know get some STEM activities done and also maybe have a little conference center there as well because we're central. How many more students would be able to come in with an addition of a new building? Double. Well it depends what it depends what we're talking. You can build anything you want. I can build it. Are we shooting for a number or just still in the early stages? I mean I think given what I'm seeing for the rates of increase I mean I think we're going to flatten out here at some point soon but I think we easily could have 200 kids with a plumbing program added and I think that would probably be adequate to keep us sustained and not you know having programs not having programs compete against each other. Right. Intuition so there's a balance where kids you get the right balance out of the missions. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Is your plan to... sorry. Typically how long do these construction projects take? Five to ten years. Depending upon I have not worked in Vermont. Massachusetts when I was there had the SBA the school building authority which would help fast track plans. And you would do it in phases probably? Potentially it depends upon you know site location you know it's it's difficult to maintain a working site and you know renovate and build in the same location but we do have the fields out back so one of the possibilities depending upon what the studies come back and tell us is that maybe we build a new building out there while this one is still in operation once it's complete the kids move over we take this down in the athletic fields are now here on this end. I was just gonna ask you are you planning to do a feasibility study on second floor over there? I'm holding off on anything till I tell October when we have the walk-through I don't want to plan or dream big until I know what I'm dreaming so and we'll see what how this study comes out and then if it comes out positive and we're able to stay in the building then yes I would want to move in some direction to get some more space. It seems like that would be a faster solution in the short term. Yep but if the building's gonna come down in a couple years I don't want to put that money in. I think the PCB testing is gonna give us a lot of information. Yeah. It's mid-October it's either around the 15th or the 20th if I remember. They seem to be charming around pretty quick so we would probably know by mid-November and just getting started. We've already got a couple of schools that were identified I've been reading about them in the press. This is a pretty priority issue for the feds right? For the state yeah. All right shall I continue? Sorry about that. I don't love talking this much so I was happy to have a break actually. Sure. How about the science? Yes. So you said the language arts and the math are not a proficiency in science the slowest and you have one math teacher and one English teacher and we have no science teacher. John is coming over from the high school to integrate math in to the programs so the RU kids it's required but there's no science teacher. There's no science teacher at all. That was in the Perkins plan for this year. We'll just see because I have to it may actually be the most the best year to do it because I need to put 30% of the Perkins plan towards academics because it's an area that needs improvement. One of the issues that was encountered there was a lot of discussion that was led in this particular forum last year is that you know you got a three and a half million dollar budget total for RTCC when you hire a staff member between salary and benefits it's a hundred and twenty thousand it's a huge impact on tuition and so what they did was a good thing a couple years back was trying to get the academics and teach the academics here but the problem that they have and Felicia can speak to it better than I can is you got a hundred and sixty six kids that have all need English you got one teacher to do it that's about double you know what the caseload should be same thing for math and the problem with science why it's so critical is when the eleventh graders come over here and don't have science they miss out a year on a year of science and all the other students get before they take the science exam in 12th grade of the month science assessment and so that's one of the things that we've been working on from the high school side is hey they're missing a year of science yet they take that Vermont science assessment in 11th grade how do we make up that year so it's it's been a little problematic but if they can get the staffing it'll be great to teach it here but the problem is is we don't want to double our tuition because then people are supposed to prevent them from coming but they won't come and I would get why the good thing about putting academic positions in Perkins is that they can remain there for as long as we need to improve which is probably forever because you always can improve your targets are always going to get higher so if we were to put those in the Perkins plan that seems like a logical thing to do we just got to get more Perkins money yes not sure how to do that so I'll continue anyways so we had three programs that were highlighted by the state as not meeting the state or federal requirements which means that they needed to offer either a tier 2 IRC or a college course and the programs offered neither I think a lot of that was due to the staff turnover last year we had a lot of new staff members who were just getting their feet on the ground and weren't qualified to teach a dual enrollment class and we're trying to figure out this whole what's the difference between a tier 1 and tier 2 IRC which is relatively new to us so this year our focus will be to make sure that every program does have one or the other also oopsie am I going forwards or backwards I thought so wait a minute all right so one of the questions looks at program of studies and meaning everything from when the kids are middle school all the way through post-secondary and career and we're working on obviously the middle school piece by offering summer camp to get kids to have that career study you know ahead of time or career exposure we also do have the challenge day which is for middle school girls that come they come in and explore careers and I think the pre-tech exploratory program has been a major boost to our our kids understanding what programs are the right fit for them all of our programs definitely offer tier 1 IRC's which is things like OSHA or first aid things that you would assume are like introductory level to go into a career not necessarily program specific where we just need to grow is the tier 2's so our hope is to have all 12 programs by 2024 have that and the reason I say 2024 is because I'm including dental dental would not have a tier 2 IRC until its code approved which would not be until the spring of 2024 so there's some talk in the study about second-year programming and second-year retention and I would say that generally speaking because we're a full-day center the second-year spots are somewhat limited so kids that do return to us for a second year that may be two to four spots in a program out of 16 and more than likely at least in many programs if they're a successful program they do work-based learning they come in for their academics and last minute they're senior projects or a senior portfolio but I think we have some programs where kids come back a second year and I'm not sure that the second-year programming is as strong so that's an area to work on I think that needs to be really strategically planned and it needs to look different than a student's first year when kids come back you see a shift in interest and taking different you know studies where someone might come in the first year for building trays they they shift their interest to automotive for example that a lot or yeah we do I mean a lot of times kids will try to figure out the pathways that are related to their interests and kind of where they're heading so for example if a student knew they wanted to design cars they might spend a year in auto and maybe a year in our industrial fabrication and design program so they could understand you know both the computer design piece of it but also you know the mechanics of a car how it actually runs so that does happen and I think that we could point kids in those directions as we that's an area we could improve upon is saying this program and this program make a nice blend if you're looking at these careers I'm not sure we articulate that well the reason I asked that as a you know I met that young man a few years ago and he went for automotive his first year but then he wanted to be a realtor and then he wanted to flip houses so if we hadn't like kind of discovered that before he started he could have done building trades where he can make improvements on flipping houses but also maybe get into marketing video production that sort of the advertising and then he knows how to market his business and the houses that he's flipping so I'm just curious if it isn't like a trend where most kids like yeah I thought I wanted this but really and I'm a senior I want to switch in a whole different direction that's well and I think the question is is this a high school student or is this a tech center student you know because I think we try to do career exploration right from a get go with them so that they can learn fairly early on if that's a path they want to pursue but I think that there is room to grow in terms of what we do with freshmen and sophomores in our ascending districts I think that could help that a lot let's see here so as I mentioned earlier the proficiency work has really guided our professional development and it's been really helpful and I think at least what Gary and I have talked about in terms of like partner schools understanding what kids are graduating with from our program so that they can plan their freshman and sophomore years a little bit more succinctly what is really challenging is when kids come to us not on track to graduate and we don't offer the courses that they need it produces a bit of a challenge to us so a lot of independent projects or independent work and online coursework essentially which I don't think is their best way of learning so all right the faculty and staff were surveyed along with a bunch of other people and in looking at all of the surveys there was some really good things to hear so one thing that the majority of the staff felt was that we have a positive school culture that we have a supportive and helpful administration and that the resources they need to do a good job at there so that's positive in my mind our whole staff has a wealth of industry knowledge I think where the gaps lie are with in our own systems with how we do our mentor program how we onboard staff members these people are coming from industry and it's overwhelming to all of a sudden learn to teach while teaching because they're going to school to learn this stuff at the same time so this year we did a more articulate sort of orientation with everybody and I think it was much better and I felt as though staff members walked in the first week really knowing feeling more secure and knowing what they need to do so that was that was a good change so I think staff reported that student behavior and we all kind of felt that I think last year was one of the issues that was impacting them feeling a little bit overwhelmed and so we had secured S or three funds to support the gary's position for two years and that's amazing because I feel like we finally have enough support in the building to have one of us be able to focus on teaching and learning in terms of like supervision evaluation and the sort of bigger global picture and one of us dealing with the day to day student discipline issues and so so far that's been amazing and I already mentioned the academics thing and one of the questions that was asked was how how do the students can the students relate to the teachers I guess in some sort of way it was sort of like that and essentially or can they see themselves in the teacher and we have really I think hired an amazing new staff here and some of these staff members are rtcc students or have attended another career tech center so I feel like their story is so important for the kids to understand and hear and it's kind of inspiring for them so I absolutely feel that way that we have kind of gotten a staff on board that can really help kids overcome barriers and make a different future for themselves than maybe what they had imagined one of the things the questions is what would make you leave and so really there's a couple things couple parts to this one it all centered around pay and right now the way the contract is written tech teachers their years of service in the industry do not equal one year of service in education and even if they were in education like if I had come from Hartford having nine years whatever I had 11 years of teaching experience I would only have five and a half on the scale here because of the way the language is written so I think that is one thing that industry folks you know there's quite a discrepancy when they come here so that's something we need to look at and address in our next contract professional development you know I think I mentioned what we're doing this year just kind of some perspective I think when COVID hit we were all just kind of in survival mode the first year we were dealing with you know working hybrid and I think we had everything we could handle we did work a little bit on career trees and recruitment and retention that year but that was about the size of it everything else was just centered around how do we how do we do right by these kiddos that are here for a tech program and half the time they're at home so that was that year 21-22 we had a fairly large amount of staff turnover you know that was last year and I think what we found with PD was it was really just responding to their needs and trying to kind of get everybody on boarded this year we do have some substantial PD planned and I think we mitigated that need for new teachers to have that in-depth stuff during the year by how we oriented them at the beginning of the year so I feel like we're heading in the right direction and it's improving faculty said that what they valued most was time spent with other colleagues around the state and other CTE centers so that's something we need to look at as well in terms of professional development that they want they talked about equity training emotional intelligence media literacy and visits to other CTE centers I think if anything last year I think helped us all realize the equity training is something we all really need to put a focus on in our building and I guess you know other than that the gary's trying to secure or has secured castleton to get college credits for staff members for the PD that we're doing in-house and that's a the goal is to help them to meet their responsibilities for licensure and making it a little bit easier for them to do that rather than having to go take something somewhere else they can get credit for the work that we are doing as a team so yeah let's see here equity this is a big number 40 to 50 percent of our students are on plans okay just think about that for a minute so 40 to 50 percent of our students are on IPs 504s and ESTs but the thing is is it's really comparable to a lot of the other CTE centers around Vermont one percent or less than one percent of our student body is from the BIPOC community and zero percent of our teaching staff so we are not terribly diverse but with that said I'm I'm thinking that we reflect our local community so I don't think it's a lack of us recruiting those folks I think it's just the nature of where we live and and the community that we live in we do need to work on advanced manufacturing recruiting females as students right now they they have not had a female student in that program for quite a few years and as I mentioned earlier the health career is dental and education for us to look at recruiting boys we talked about standardized tests so I'm not going to go over that again I think our promotional materials do promote diversity like just our front cover we have a female in construction trades on the front cover I'm probably going to change that this year to a different student but the idea that we tried to represent everybody through that promotional material I think is there and then just in terms of career exploration which is what we already talked about the pre-tech exploratory program is helpful in career exploration we also use the TFS career trees which I mentioned earlier which allows kids to research different careers in their pathway we administer the ASVAB so that kids can find their strengths we have a subscription currently for youth science for them to discover their aptitudes and interests and then again for career exploration sort of more globally we offer tours to kiddos anyone that wants to come to the center I'm happy to walk them around with their class I did it with a fourth grade class last year we did it with all of the ninth graders last year and I think there's room to grow that and then I hope that our middle school camp will grow as well so I think that's our last slide I'm going to get out of present mode so while Felicia gets out of present mode are there any questions I have a question about the camp what does that look like well a lot of fun according to Facebook yeah it was awesome videos it was great fun yeah so we had what do we have 10 10 kiddos this year so we started small we worked with Heidi and the town to they they provided this the staffing component the pay even though it was our staff and then we had the supplies out of Perkins and they explored four different areas I believe we had health careers we had criminal justice and cyber security we had auto and then we had Gary who did like a metalworking and the kids parents every day would be like they're coming home and they're having a blast so it was really really successful and we just need to grow it I think teachers more teachers need to be on board and we can you know maybe make the time in each program a little less yeah what what's the time we did it all day all day for the entire summer we did no for one week so what like did they do all four things so they did all four things and in the middle of day they went to the pool and that's camp staff did that part lunch and the pool time with them but and can I share about what Lance did yeah the video instructor taught for four weeks at the elementary school providing programming for students kindergarten through six primarily working with kids grades four to six but some of the youngest as well and that's where I think those videos came from because I still have students saying to me when I go out to an elementary school will you run a an after school program so getting at that young age to work with a tech instructor like sparked them so I think we should do more at the elementary level next year I think it was really a good partnership I think that's a good segue for what I was going to ask is there any programs that students wish that we offered is another category that we don't that we should explore in the next few years for example podcasting is becoming very popular again well again but it's getting even more popular I've even had co-workers leave the job where I work to start their own podcast it's all about how to talk how to speak how to edit is there stuff like that that are showing interest for younger people live streaming whatever that we can help set them up with skills to well I think it's interesting that you say that because I prior to consolidating the graphics program and the video program into the program that Lance now teaches I had a lot of parents asking about broadcasting and so that is one component of his curriculum but I don't know if he does podcasts or not okay it's weird because when I back in 90s you'd actually go to college for communications and broadcasting and learning how to present yourself it kind of faded right and now we're seeing it come back as a need and not just for radio or traditional media but even just you know you're on youtube and you're live streaming or you're making a video or you're you know so I just see a shift and I see a lot of interest in younger people is that you know is that something that would drive more people you know juniors and seniors like I want to do this this is going to set me up so when I'm ready to go independent or join another company I can do it so is there anything like that besides that I mean I think the the one that I really think is a need that's been expressed is plumbing and heating I have been reached out to in terms of like animal science and vet tech as a need um that is a need oh and ophthalmology oh that's in a bad spot yeah they need a lot of those people talking to eye care for you just last week yeah and dr barcelo actually when I was in there he's like you work at the tech center what can you do for us yeah exactly um we're out there but yeah we get in the community a lot too and I get feedback and I tell people I'm on the rtcc board and some of the businesses say like I just don't feel a lot of times the kids are graduating with what they need to be in an auto mechanic and I tell them we'll step up and give us feedback so do we also send out questionnaires to people that might employ kids once they graduate like they're their um level of knowledge um where we could improve on that do we do anything like a poll I guess of employers that's a really good idea no uh just to get feedback like oh like it'd be nice for them to start off knowing how to do oil changes entire changeovers first where they might feel like they're a group of the kids are lacking how to do that skill when they first come out you know um and I think a lot of it you know it depends on the kid yeah and it depends too on the oversight with their work-based learning I think um sometimes the placements didn't know what they needed what their responsibilities were necessarily so I think that articulating that would really help I know that Jeremy is going to be going out every like two weeks he's going to go to every placement so I think we're building that relationship with the the businesses now that maybe hasn't been there and I think that'll come and I know like Vermont castings I'm pretty in with them and I was just talking like you know it's great to get kids to come here and work and try it out but also give back a little bit to the center and give feedback and um even like what type of equipment you're using now so they can be maybe you know brought that as a learning curve well at school so it's not so new when they come out there actually like if it's CNC machines okay we need a program on on how to operate CNC machines how to program them what do we need for these kids so when they come out there and that's one piece I think I somehow skipped over in the presentation but there are areas of our programming that need new equipment yeah we were there and luckily we secured Brian Kippen for industrial designer fabrication and he's already like yep I'm going to be raising thousands of dollars and the next x amount of time and we're going to get this place up to date so I think he's got enough business you know connections to make that happen but also he runs a business and so we can go see what a modern shop looks like right and even some shops will be getting rid of aged equipment which might be only two or three years old but if it somehow can be donated or it can be like looked over to make sure it's safe for the kids and then they can have at least some hands on semi newer equipment that might be like I said like talking to the industries like give back like are you throwing away equipment that could be used to help these kids that you don't have to dip into a budget and just kind of have that I think it goes back to another piece it's just the strength of our advisory boards we need to have really strong program advisory boards and that's why that's a piece of it you know well Jeremy's not shy so I think he's gonna fill that yeah that that position quite well yeah I think so too any other questions for me I have two sure um so is this a yearly report it is not so when Perkins five came out this was a requirement of Perkins five to have a clna report that happened in 2020 and it was to say the least kind of disorganized with a not a lot of guidelines okay and so I was under the impression at least from that point that the two year would be just kind of like a you know tweak here's some things that have changed like a little bit of you know not not a major deal it ended up being a full-fledged another clna like more in depth with like really clear expectations for what we needed to look at so this will be repeated every two years I'm thinking they're gonna now that they've got a system in place I think it's going to be every two years okay and then will there be so that's an external utilization of the findings like the data trending what they're seeing and then how what that investment will be back into this facility exactly so they so they look at it not only for if it's meeting state and federal program quality standards but they're looking at it for whether it will be eligible for Perkins funding got it okay so here on our agenda you're looking for an approval from us I am just an approval of the findings that I've just stated to you I need to be able to give that to the for my agency of ed can I have a motion to approve um Felicia's report sure so is there any more comments before we vote okay all in favor of the motion to approve the clna as presented please say aye aye any opposed fantastic so I believe lane that you shared your superintendent report already um was there anything additionally Felicia that you wanted to share or anything about the financials um not at this time no I think financials look good typically you look at you know they should be spending about 8.3 per month I looked at yours you've only I remember correctly you've only spent about 8 percent and we're two two months into the year so they're they're really good we tend to be kind of right on target it sounds like um yeah so we're just you know really the only thing is getting this Perkins funding approved that pays for a lot of the IRC's it pays for our Vermont works for women so there's like some of those other things that we do come through that funding okay and a portion of a couple of positions okay uh our next order of business is the consent agenda which includes the minutes from our May 11th meeting um hopefully you all saw those they were mailed if I could get a motion to approve the minutes sure thank you Sam perhaps the second Nathan second thank you um all in favor hi hi okay any a post all right so any other business to bring forth at this time I don't think I have any any members here Lane anything awesome yeah yeah good job Alicia thank you all it's been a been a good start it's been a great start to the year push that for the last three yeah that's so awesome to hear yeah it's been refreshing to feel it feels more like kind of normal what it used to feel like to be in education insane yeah all right with no further business and just a lot of accolades for the good work um we will see you all on November 9th thank you so much thank you appreciate it thank you


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You know, I've always loved the version in John's gospel of the feeding of the 5,000 more than the other versions because John Has some behind-the-scenes insight and info that the others didn't include And particularly when it says that Jesus Turned first to Philip and said where shall we buy enough food to feed all these people then it says Jesus asked him this Knowing already what he was going to do. He asked him to test him Because he already had in mind what he was going to do And it occurs to me that sometimes a mark of good leadership is the willingness to appear stuck In order to give room for others to flourish in Order to give room for others to come forward with a solution and this whole exercise It seemed to me was Jesus intentionally probing for how Solution possibility minded His team were by this stage of his leadership towards them So for him to ask a question Deliberate in knowing he didn't ask him because he was short of an answer or an idea But he's asking just to test him Holding back his own suggestions till our room for Philip's suggestions to come forward I think poor leadership and I think poor mentoring poor coaching poor teaching poor parenting is when we are too quick to offer What's in our minds That shuts down what's in their minds when we are too quick to Tell them what we know or tell them how we would do it or tell them What we think is the best thing to do Instead of allowing room and space which Jesus clearly did in this scenario and others Allowing them to search inside themselves for did they have any idea of what to do about this feeding of this multitude And he asked him this to test him knowing what was in his heart already to do um and Then Philip Comes up with this eight months wages wouldn't feed all these people This mathematical calculation logistics response Which I guess you know logistical responses details people are important in what we all do in team building and so on and so on But it was the wrong answer because Jesus Asked this to test him it strikes me that it's unfair to to Create a test scenario if you don't know the answer to the test So if Jesus deliberately tested Philip and the rest of them with this question It must mean that he knew they knew something that they didn't know they knew Because he's not testing them For do they have the same solution as is in my mind He's testing them for do you will all think outside the box do you have any Suggestions do you have any? Possibility thinking in there, or are you just terrified by the question terrifying the idea of Feeding a multitude which in fairness to them was unprecedented. They had not done this before so they had no precedents set for it in their minds of how to respond to him and yet despite them having no idea of What was possibly gonna happen next he still tests them and we either put that down to God been deliberately deliberately taunting us and playing with us And I don't think that's his nature at all All we put it down to the test was because he knew that there was something in these guys that unless he Pretended to be stuck and not know what to do He would never allow room for their ideas to come forward when he always tells what you think then what I think Doesn't really need to be said because you're always the one we rely on and default to as the leader as The teacher as the parent as the mentor as the coach as the pastor or whatever As the one with the suggestion. I love how he was willing to appear stuck in order to Explore the solution oriented Dimensions in them. I Love that Philip answered logistically when in fact Jesus had no intention of buying food anywhere He put the word in by deliberately I think to send them off on a false trail to see whether or not they would respond literally to the word buy or Whether they would hear by as just one possibility and come up with others Without thinking he thinks he thinks we're gonna buy. We have to talk about buying. It's a it's a it's a finance It's an economic question and it was not all so where shall we buy bread was rigged That was the nature of the test the word buy was a Was was a trigger word to see whether or not they would jump in with only a buy suggestion, which is what Philip did Then Andrew chips in There's a there's a boy here with with with a small packed lunch of loaves and fishers Then he adds but how far will so little go amongst so many him not knowing he is in the neighborhood of a possibility thinking and Suggest this and I think in life you either are gonna be mainly a Philip or an Andrew a logistical details Here's why it can't happen person or a glass half full. I don't know. Here's a little beginning Here's something that could help person. I don't know that it's the answer I imagine Andrew felt a bit embarrassed about suggesting it because it was such a small amount compared to so many But he said it anyway and that was the option Jesus Jesus chose and the whole thing This whole behind-the-scenes few moments that John gives us as fascinating to me on the kind of leadership style Jesus built And we often do not build try and build into your leadership style this Intentional appearing to be stuck Be slow to give your opinion be slow to give your solution be slow to Spell it out for us and leave room for others to come forward And you're gonna have Phillips and Andrews and it's helpful for them to know who they are and Create room for people to flourish Even with something as ridiculous as the question he posed to them to figure out who here is even getting and in the beginnings of What it is I'm trying to do and achieve through you Because I think the greatest miracle Jesus wanted to see happen in the team was not feeding the 25,000 or healing the sick the greatest miracle for longevity and success was gonna be the miracle between their ears Were they going to be solution-minded enough as leaders were they going to be in their heads? One-dimensional one-size-fits-all responses needed to be guided and told what to do all the time Or would there be entrepreneurial? Would they be imaginative? Would they be creative in the way that they approach problems in life? And of course we all know the early church demanded huge amounts from that from all of them every twist and turn of The persecutions that beset the early church and the need for them to kind of pop up and reinvent in other places and navigate the whole Nightmare that the early church went through in the persecution they experienced So Maybe God's testing you right now Maybe God is wondering what you'll come up with and just in finishing Let me say we have no idea by the way what Jesus did have in mind because The idea that he did go for came from Andrew not from him So we don't know what actually Jesus did have in mind He just said he had in mind what he was going to do and then Andrew suggested the boys lunch That was not Jesus's idea So to this day, we don't know did he have that in mind or do you have something else in mind? It doesn't matter because what he decided to do is go with Andrew's option and maybe shelve his own idea thinking Okay, let's do that then because that's how God is with us. There's no right or wrong answer There are suggestions and options and then you pick one and often God picks one Because he's our friend. He said I no longer call you servants But friends it is not a great friendship if only one of us gets all the time to pick what we do If only one of us knows the answer or only one of us is seen as having enough authority credibility to have an answer So Jesus trains them To come up with solutions to think outside the box to think in possibility becomes possible When you put your mind to it and heart to it so if you're a leader then in this next Day or two of your life somewhere Maybe pretend to be stuck Come across like you don't know what to do and don't tell them what's in your mind Because what's in their mind may be better than what's in your mind and the releasing of that mind in them Creates more growth in the team than you just saying what you should think we should do and we all kind of do that Think about that today


Well, we say that she decided not to, but in reality she is carrying out her father's will. Because she knows that Votan loves Zygmunt. She has learned to love Zygmunt herself through what she has learned from Votan. So she approaches this with a heavy heart to begin with, because she knows that in reality Votan doesn't really want to kill Zygmunt. But coming from this world of these immortal gods, Brunhilde has never seen love. She's never experienced love. She certainly has never seen it between Votan and Fricka. That might be an understatement. But in any event, it touches something in her, and it is the pivotal moment, I believe, and that's maybe because I'm a soprano singing Brunhilde, that changes the course of the ring cycle. And so she decides from observing this relationship and the fact that he is going to pass up seeing Votan again. He's going to pass up seeing these other fallen heroes and the fair maidens that are promised to him for this woman. And even that he would sacrifice her life before going on with Brunhilde. And that stirs something in her. And she makes a decision to go against her father's will. And there are horrific circumstances as a result of this decision. But it's also part of the beginning of what makes her such a courageous and fantastic character. Pierre? Well, she has known love because the love of her father towards her and Vajraversa is very important because that's the major theme of the monologue of the second act. But not a romantic love. It's not a romantic love, but it's the best love, the most lasting, depending on the father you have, of course. Depending on the father. But I think in this case it was, it is a genuine relationship, which is anywhere portrayed by Vajra in a very, as a very honest relationship in the second act. So I think that, of course, in the third act she argues with her father. She gives her arguments, he gives his. And in fact, I think what the whole ring tries to show is that in spite of the fact that the gods may invent a series of robots or figures that they think they can manipulate or predict the behavior of, everything from beginning to end rolls into one failure, rolling into the other, rolling into the other, to the end of the ring. And I think that's kind of the main argument that, in a way, I don't think Vajra believes in the robot, but he's demonstrating, in fact the opposite, that he doesn't believe in the robot but the human beings are flawed and that we will never achieve perfection because upstairs or downstairs we are prone to the same psychological constrictions and paradoxes and contradictions. That's what I, personally that's how I've experienced the ring as a piece. I've always gone back, I've been fascinated for 40 years by the myth of the Golem, which is, of course, a medieval Jewish myth from Prada, in a way that I've also participated in the making of an opera about the Golem. I'm really very interested in this theme and I think I've used it as an inspiration also in, I mean the Golem is precisely that, it is a failure. It is about the humanity of the Maharal, the rabbi who creates it and it's about the human flaws both of the creator and the created. It's always helped me very much as a kind of compass in working on the ring, also on Pasifal and Lohengrin, which are also about figure, artificial figures that are pseudo-human, that are playing a role in the story. So I think personally that the ring is about not believing in a saviour, it's trying to come to terms with the inevitable mistakes we make and we are going to make. And certainly true, isn't it that the passage that we just saw, her decision, is the contribution she makes to the twilight of the gods, because she is defying her father and as a result of that, Votan admits in the great duet that he is, what does he call himself, an unseligan avigan, an unhappy immortal and that now the authority of the gods has now been usurped. And it really begins with her decision here. Yes, it may be the best of laughs, but it's a very unequal laugh. She is at the beginning of the act, Votan's will, she's identical with him really. This is the scene in which she begins to emancipate, this is not the end of her way, but this is the moment when she begins to emancipate herself from him, this is one thing. The other is what you were talking about. This is the moment when she discovers that there is something beyond the Valhalla, that there is a certain way of being in the world that is not available to the gods. And this is a great discovery which transforms her from a goddess into a human being. And I think that has to do with limitation and part of what we were talking about before, I think part of the human experience, but also the experience of love, desire first and love is the experience of limits.  I can't conceive of a humanity without the notion of limit and I can't conceive. I mean, I think all of the history of poetry, the history of the novel and is about love and love is always about the limit. It's always trying to get across the limit. It's the danger of the limit. Even in Tristan and Isolde, in the medieval story, there's always a notion of obstacle and there's a wonderful book called Love in the Western World by Denis de Rougement where he explains that in essence, really, the history of Western culture is the history of this obstacle and this transcendence that is always a flirtation with death because this flirtation, this coming close, this obsession with death as a sort of ecstasy of blurring the limits, of eliminating the limit. We want to eliminate the limit, therefore, in this passionate impulse, behind the impulse, the life impulse that there's a desire, there is also a death wish which is both, I think the going through the limit, the transgression of the limit is both at the same time. I can't conceive of this, I think what you're saying in terms of her transformation is also her witnessing this limitation which she perhaps doesn't know before and it's so much part of our experience here, it's part of every, it's part of our experiences in terms of defining who we are as humans but it's part of even of our wanting to come out of ourselves, to come out of the limit ourselves, to meet the limit of somebody else and perhaps in the dream to transcend this limit, we have this idea of God, of love, what a lapsus, that can then be resolved in this sort of fantasy of deathlessness which in fact can only come to us if we dissolve completely. So there's the end dissolution of course, dissolution is ecstasy but the dissolution only comes if we go beyond the limit so it always implies the notion of a limit. Well in a couple of decades when we have a pill or an injection you can take that will reverse aging and let you live indefinitely at the age that you choose, we will find that almost everyone on earth prefers to take this pill then to get old and die, not everyone but almost everyone and we will then find there are other limits that we're coming up against. It's not the case, we surmount many limits that squirrels encounter, however we've encountered our own limits which squirrels cannot imagine and a superhuman AI may not die, an upgrade human may not die and they may not have a limit of seven plus or minus two items in their short term memory, they may have overcome many, many limits that plague us, they may not get sick and old, they may even be able to fuse minds with each other into a single combined mind if they want to rather than communicating by touch and language. On the other hand that doesn't apply, they will be beyond all limits, the general process you describe of finding limits and challenges and then achieving satisfaction by overcoming these challenges. But that's essentially human and what you described, it strikes me as essentially inhuman so it would be another kind of world that is difficult to conceive of just as the dog looking at equations of the cosmos or inflationary cosmology can't quite understand it, I'm not sure we're able to completely compete.


The Institute monitoring of crystal growth using Mephisto experiment is a collaborative American and French investigation of the fundamentals of crystal growth. The French Space Agency, CNES, and the French Nuclear Energy Agency, CENG, designed and built Mephisto, the crystal growth hardware for this experiment. Project management and support functions of the experiments are provided by personnel of the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The experiment will fly as part of the second United States microgravity payload USMP-2 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. The United States principal investigator for this Mephisto flight is Professor Reza Apostien, chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. The data from this French American collaboration will be analyzed and the scientific information will be exchanged. The knowledge gained from these experiments will be of fundamental importance to the semiconductor industry. For the upcoming USMP-2 mission, Dr. Bastien and his research team have chosen bismuth with small amounts of tin to study solidification and crystal growth. Researchers have found that crystals grown from this alloy possess a well-behaved C-beck coefficient. This property of the bismuth tin crystal allows a non-intrusive, real-time measurement of the solid liquid interface temperature. The measurement of temperature and other local conditions at the solid liquid interface or boundary between solid and liquid material are important to scientists in understanding the structural and chemical composition of the crystals that are produced. To illustrate a solid liquid interface, consider the point at which the solid wax of a burning candle turns to liquid. The solid liquid interface continues to move downward as the candle continues to burn. The hardware is mounted on a bridge-like carrier in the space shuttle's cargo bay. The French-built Mephisto furnace is designed to grow crystals under well-controlled conditions of temperature and velocity. As the experiment begins, the sample rods are melted. The thermal condition is identical for all three samples. As illustrated here, the red components represent the furnaces, while the blue components represent the heat sinks or cooling sections. The furnace on the left is stationary, while the furnace on the right is mounted on a sliding mechanism. As the experiment continues, the melted sample rod is slowly solidified. The boundary between the liquid and solid material, or solid liquid interface, occurs between the red and blue components of the Mephisto apparatus. As the mobile furnace moves toward the fixed furnace, the solid liquid interface moves also. This causes the temperature of the liquid material to fall slightly below its freezing point before solidifying. This process, known as supercooling, provides a means of controlling the solidification of the crystal. This is a key variable in determining the structural composition of the crystal. Supercooling is used to describe the temperature of the interface when the interface is moving. If the interface is not moving, in other words, if we are not growing crystals, the interface temperature is exactly at the melting point. However, when the interface moves, its temperature is slightly below the melting point, and the difference between the actual interface temperature and the melting point of that interface is called supercooling. It is actually the driving force that causes the interface to move. Although Mephisto processes all three samples simultaneously, different measurements are taken of each sample. The C-beck technique is a non-intrusive way of measuring the temperature of the solid liquid interface. A voltage across the sample is created by a potential difference between the stationary solid and liquid interface and the moving solid and liquid interface. The level of supercooling at the interface in the moving furnace is determined from this voltage difference. Another measurement is Peltier marking. These markings are created by pulsing an electric current through the sample. This current pulse causes a momentary change in the local chemical composition that outlines the shape of the solid liquid interface. By examining the shape of this interface, scientists can determine the growth conditions necessary to reduce crystals with fewer imperfections and more uniform composition. At the conclusion of the experiment, the final two centimeters of one of the melted sample rods is gas quenched. The quenching instantaneously freezes the tin in the liquid. The quenched sample can then be analyzed to determine the at-temperature concentration of tin in the liquid. All this experiment information is transmitted to the payload operations control center in real time as it is happening. The principal investigator can issue commands to adjust or repeat any segment of the experiment, such as re-running some of the melting rates. From these experiments we hope to learn the fundamentals that are involved in solidification of crystals. We hope to understand what is happening at the solid liquid interface and use this understanding in improving our scientific and technological basis for crystal growth. So how is all this experimentation with crystal growth going to help us here on earth? Well, since the inception of the first crystal set, when people were amazed by the miracle of wireless communications, the development and ever-increasing use of crystals has generated the search for improvement in crystal quality. On earth, gravity makes the growing process more complex. Non-uniformity, defects and voids are common and result in adverse effects on the properties of the crystal. By growing crystals in space, these earthbound effects are eliminated. We'll have a better understanding of the growth process which will enable us to optimize techniques for growing crystals here on earth. This information translates into practical uses, such as the development of better semiconductors. Electrical circuits are built into the silicone crystals used in today's solid state devices. In industry, complex machining operations, robotic assembly and automated inspection are all controlled by crystal equipped mechanisms. In the medical field, new techniques in the operating rooms are the result of advances in crystal technology. Computers are increasingly faster and more efficient because of better quality crystals. And today's communications have come a long way from the first crystal set. This experiment will help to advance the fundamental knowledge of solidification and crystal growth. It is a collaborative international exercise in which the scientific data will be shared in exchange for the benefit of all of us.


Good morning to everyone. Let's talk about radiation and Mars. We are the Italian Mars Society. Our organization is Mars Planet. Our main project is Mars City. Mars City is the idea to build an innovation center based on space exploration activity and obviously Mars exploration. Since Mars is the next destination of humans, at least there are a lot of people who think so in the world, we are working to this. Inside Mars City we have different modules. One module is called VU-Mars. VU-Mars are the group of technology we investigate related to the simulation of Mars exploration and space exploration by means of virtual reality and in the last two years also augmented reality. This is our website as Mars Planet organization. This is our project. For what is concerned about radiation and Mars, it is very important to understand how radiation will affect travel from Earth to Mars and on the lives of astronauts when they will live on Mars. These are two separated problems, while they have a lot of connections, but are separated because in space we have a full level of radiation and on Mars we have a little bit limited radiation and this is due to the atmosphere on Mars. Mars has a thin atmosphere, about 1% of Earth's atmosphere, but with this thin atmosphere can be done a lot of interesting stuff. One of these is a major production or protection of astronauts against radiation. And so what we are working to is a forecast of weather on Mars and on space, we exclude the forecast of radiation levels and we use something like machine learning approach or other kind of approach, deterministic approach based mostly on Python tools. This is the reason because we are here today, obviously. When we talk about radiation, we have different problems. Radiation is a complicated stuff. The most important problem related to human health is particle radiation because particle radiation can have effects on human body and can modify the DNA of people. In this sense, we must make a classification of radiation in type of radiation. A first group of problem arises directly from sun. Sun has reactions of coronal masses and this mass produces radiation. Sun produce also energetic particles and these energetic particles are another type of radiation. And in space and on Mars we have obviously also galactic cosmic rays, rays coming from outside the solar systems and which are combined with the overall amount of radiation. So the study of radiation must be taken into account at least all these three components. The first type of particles have different times. They arrive with different amplitude in space and on Mars and the same for galactic cosmic rays. On Earth we have a big advantage. The advantage is that we have a magnetic field which protects Earth from radiation. This magnetic field was also available on Mars according to latest studies in the first times of the Mars history. In the first one billion years of the life of Mars there were probably a magnetic field on Mars. It is not exactly clear how this magnetic field disappeared but now this magnetic field doesn't exist and so if we want to protect future astronauts on Mars we must investigate new type of techniques and the materials. There is a good example of this study which is currently carried out on an international space station. International space station has been designed to orbit near the Earth at 400 kilometers but at this distance it is almost in an open space so what happens in international space station is interesting also for the study on radiation related to Mars. There are many theories and hypotheses on the kind of effects that radiation can have on astronaut on Mars. However, what we know about radiation is related to our activity on Earth and we have different levels from few levels related to medical devices. For example, when we make an x-ray analysis we get some radiation. Obviously this radiation is very low in our case and we must compare these levels that we have on Earth to the possible levels we have during space travel or during the life on Mars. We have already made an experiment of this because the history of space is about 60 years and now we have acquired from the first space missions in Apollo, Gemini and Apollo we have acquired a lot of information and new information are developed continuously by the data that we acquire in different manners with telescopes and other stuff like this. What is true is that the level of risk for a scene for a Mars mission, for a human mission to Mars is the most high level that we can imagine now and so we must work a lot in order to reduce the risk related to this mission. This also because a possible mission of Mars of humans cannot be lower than three years, two years and half, five years. Till now we have made this study only on a few limited time in the best case is one year for the astronauts on the International Space Station. So this is another challenge related to the exploration of Mars. The big level of exposure for a big time during the space travel and the stay of Mars. Now, practically, what can be done to solve this problem? One concept is the space weather forecast. We can predict what happens to the sun, to the cosmic rays and so on. And this is something that we can do by means of software in some manner. And the other point are the shielding material. We can develop appropriate shielding material to protect spacecraft and astronauts from radiation. What are the best shielding material? A very good shielding material is water. But water has a big weight. It cannot be transported in the space in big quantities. Water is a good means of protection because of hydrogen. Because hydrogen has the same dimension of the radiation particles which are composed of neutrons and protons in many cases. Other kind of protection based on materials are, for example, plastics. Plastics, like polyethylene, can have a good performance. But they, again, have a weight and not is too much to be put in the space. The most recent studies of materials are investigating the possibility to use nanomaterials. Some nanomaterials with boron, nitrogen and carbon, again, inside can have effect on the medication on the reduction of radiation. This because the little particles of radiation can be stopped by the little materials of nanomaterials. And this is a very huge amount of studies that currently have been developed in the space science and technology. We have to produce something in terms of software. We must analyze what are the main use of data and how to tackle with this data and introduce them in a kind of software management system. We have a space weather prediction center which are always largely used also for commercial and practical application. Do you know about 30 years ago, 25 years ago, there was a big solar flares which caused in Canada and North America some problems to the energetic equipment used by energy companies. This was a big problem and this problem must be useful as in many cases, all big problems to understand how the problem of the prediction can affect our system on earth, especially for us, we live at the middle latitude, not in the northern and south latitude. Objuzely, this can have a huge effect on telecommunication systems and everything is related to electromagnetic field. Practically everything on earth today. We use these two data as a basis of our project N, O, A, A, A and the predicts and this data coming from this center offer information also to other staff, like for example geomagnetic activity. And this information are useful also, not only for the development of the project in itself that is the prediction of radiation values but how for example introduce this data in a virtual environment. Suppose that we are a virtual astronaut and we are now exploring Mars or space. What we want to do is to have inside the virtual reality environment some data that comes directly from the source data and have been managed to give us information directly to astronauts and this can be used also in the future. In the sense in the future possible astronauts will have real time data on radiation and prediction on the level of radiation. Prediktion is important both during the space travel and during the stay of Mars especially during the space travel we can suppose to have a spacecraft divided into we have an area of this spacecraft which is especially equipped with materials and other devices to protect the astronauts when there are big levels of radiation. So if we have systems to predict radiation we can suppose to place this system on the spacecraft and when the astronauts are in space based on these systems they protect the area of the spacecraft. Practically there are also other kind of sources these sources coming from data of satellites on other devices in the space our project is based on the idea to take all this data and to by means of machine learning and also by means of deterministic approach based on Python to use, to predict the radiation dose in a spacecraft or in an area in the space. What the basic point of the project is also to give some alarm signal when the system predicts some high level of radiation and so we should have systems to recognize dangerous events related to big amount of radiation. Here we see a possible roadmap of the two approach and this is more or less the main sections in which we divide the tool. So there is a first unit which analyze data another one which give alarms which give signals related to alarms and there are some rest service related to this management of information. The project in itself has many components this is a resume and we are working to a part now and we are developing other parts in the next months and this is the idea of the machine learning approach under development and we make a kind of training based on the data that we have recovered from the source and we must define all the kind of layers hidden layers that we need to better manage this data source. So what we see this project as a first step of a further project in which we include all the tools based on machine learning which are useful for the travel in space from Earth to Mars and are useful also during the life of astronauts or Mars. This is more or less a description of what we are doing. Thank you very much for the talk. We have time for questions. Yes, thank you very much for the talk. The learning data you are using you showed the charts or something like that. Is it just one-dimensional so all the spikes you are measuring or is it multidimensional data? Machine learning is multidimensional according to the source data. Now we are developing the first dimension. OK, thank you. Sorry for the notifications. Anyone else questions please? Just a reminder, you can vote on the talk on the app. I can ask a question. I don't know if it is really relevant to Python but do you know if any other institutes are doing the same kind of research? There are many, many institutions working on radiation because radiation has been investigated as a fifth step by space agency but now it is becoming also a commercial because on radiation we can take information useful for health. So there are for sure different institutions working on this from different approaches. So radiation is related to the human mission to Mars. You can use the same technique for moon because there are people working a lot of moon and you can use this for moon. And for Earth as well? For Earth as well. Earth as well is a practical problem because as I mentioned our telecommunication systems becomes even more complicated and huge, this system could be affected by radiation. There are also some similarities with medical problems. There are problems type Chernobyl or also in medical activities in which this study can be compared and can be useful for each other while they are distinct in their scope. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone.


What is going on guys, it's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and today I bring you my true meaning of war looting results and my challenge of the hour is looting results across all three of my characters. Now this last week these were the only things I ran in terms of weekly looting activities but let's just get straight into what I obtained and starting on my Hunter. From the true meaning of war I received a party crash shotgun, this dropping at F-335 a attack offering solar burn, mods wear, rescue mag and surrounded also having reinforced barrel as well for that extra range. To be honest though the mods this came with were pretty shitting compared to the ones on my main shotgun and that what I know can be obtained on this weapon so this will be infused for sure. From the challenge of the hour's weapon package I received the bane of the taken heavy machine gun this drops at F-335 offering arc burn, mods wear, underdog and heart swap. From the armor package I received the warden sight this only dropped at F-334 which is a little sheet and a little useless. I need all that gear now at F-335 just to infuse my other pieces. Moving on to my titan and from the true meaning of war I received the corrosive alpha loopy Hunter Exhaustic Chest armor with this I made a noobish mistake of not equipping my high level gear before cashing in that bounty meaning this chest piece dropped at F-318 defense that's what I get for being a scrub. Okay from the challenge of the hour's weapon package I received the her fury sniper rifle dropping at F-335. Now you guys know I'm in need of a sniper with a decent role and this one wasn't too bad but it certainly ain't the best I'll get it's mods wear partial refund outlaw and also having snapshot so not too bad I could probably make do that until I get that beastly ass 1,000 yards stare or lung bow. Moving on to the armor package and I received the witness grieve leg armors these dropping at F-335 defense offering intellect and discipline mods wear increase the amount of sidearm ammunition you can carry and increase the duration for five seconds after an arc double kill. Okay so moving on to my warlock and from the true meaning of war I received the plan C exotic fusion rifle dropping at F-334 attack I actually didn't own a year 2 version of this weapon as I refused to buy it from the vault but after seeing how people beast with this in PVP I was half tempted to go and buy it so I'm glad I got it dropped. Okay so moving on to my challenge loot and from the weapons package I received the her champion shotgun this dropping at F-335 attack dropping me full arsehole reinforced barrel and surrounded so it ain't too bad of a role we'll definitely try this thing out. From the armor package I received the keeper's gloves these dropping at F-334 defense again gear at a low level it's just absolutely useless to me but guys that is the loot I received last week across all three of my characters what did you guys get let me know down below in that comment section if you enjoyed the video do drop a like I'd appreciate the support subscribe for that daily destiny and I'll catch you guys on that next one