north metro

It's possible to reach for the stars from the neighborhoods around Jackson Middle School in Champlin.

That's the message students got Friday from someone who's done it.

About 60 seventh- and eighth-graders had a live video chat with John Ziemer, a former Jackson student who now is a senior engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The visit was possible because of NASA's Digital Learning Network, which not only makes scientists available to classrooms, but also offers complementary curriculums, according to the network's education specialist, Lyle Tavernier. The program uses a high-speed Internet connection and video conferencing software, Skype or any available interface technology to link students in classrooms with live scientists.

All 10 NASA centers have a studio for the program. Tavernier said he coordinates several sessions a month. The virtual visits are a newer feature of the program, less than a year old, he said, and it's relatively rare for scientists to pay visits to their old schools.

This one came together when Ziemer's mother, who still lives in the neighborhood, called Dee McLellan, Jackson Middle School's observatory coordinator, to find out if her son could see the observatory during a holiday visit. The answer was yes, McLellan said, but only if he promised to visit again with students.

From a big screen in the school's observatory on Friday, Ziemer told the students he had spent part of his childhood in Champlin shooting model rockets aloft from the field behind the school.

"I always wanted to go into space," he told them, adding that he'd written a letter to NASA at age 5, asking what he needed to do to become an astronaut.

"It's kind of dorky, but I did it," he said. Someone at NASA responded, telling him to study math, science and engineering.

"Math and science is really the key to opening new places," he said.

Years later, his old school is a science, technology, engineering and math magnet center. Many of the students who listened intently Friday to his descriptions of the ion-propulsion engines he helps build have some experience building their own rockets and launching them in the same football field.

He showed them video of the Dawn Mission. The spacecraft uses propulsion technology he helped to design. It now is orbiting the asteroid Ceres, outside of the Mars orbit. He explained to them how the ultralight ion propulsion engines allow for lighter spacecraft, and in the future more space for cargo -- or humans.

Ziemer shared more of his own trajectory, from the then-Jackson Junior High to Anoka High, because there was no Champlin Park High across the street when he graduated in 1990. He got his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a master's from Princeton University before going to work for NASA.

He didn't confine himself to physics as a student. He sang in the choir, ran cross-country, swam. He loved biology and earth sciences.

"Anything that really interests you," he told the students. "It's important to follow your passion."

After the students left and Tavernier closed the link, McLellan was elated.

"Ion engines haven't made it into the textbook yet," she said, adding that because of a publishing lag, books used in schools often are up to 10 years out of date. "Using this kind of technology puts students in the position of having the most current information, and also to interact with those who are discovering it and making it and developing it."

Noting that this technology wasn't available when Ziemer sat in Jackson classrooms, she wondered aloud what kind of technological change her students might see in their lifetimes, and what they might help to create.

"I think the next step will be some kind of holodeck," she said, laughing.

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409