Improving student learning experience via extracurricular undergraduate research in near-space ballooning

This paper describes an on-going near-space, high-altitude ballooning program at Gannon, aimed for improving student learning experience via undergraduate research. Through team members' laboratory-based extracurricular activities in a complete cycle of an engineering design, our program is also intended to contribute to the development of the STEM workforce, particularly in electrical and computer engineering. Initially beginning with a high-altitude weather ballooning project with 10 senior undergraduate students in AY 2009-10, this program offered STEM students various opportunities to participate in payload design projects such as High Altitude Radiation Detector (HARD) Payloads #1, #2, and #3, as well as an Undergraduate Student Instrument Project (USIP) 2013 payload. The current student-faculty team is developing several high-altitude ballooning payloads for both the HASP 2017 campaign and the 2017 Eclipse Ballooning Project. We further present assessment results that demonstrate the programmatic success and the effectiveness of our program in improving the student learning experience and also in the development of the STEM workforce through high-altitude ballooning.