Bravo! Awards Submission – COMMUNICATION PROJECT OR PROGRAM

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Name / Nom

Peter Chevrier

Organization/ Organisation

School District No. 43 (Coquitlam)

Communications Projects or Programs are full, complete projects or programs such as the creation of new branding, development of a new awareness campaign, the launch of a new web initiative with multiple components. Provide information below, not exceeding six pages including this page. You may submit an additional five page supplemental or back-up information. La catégorie « Programme ou projet de communication » regroupe des projets complets qui incluent plusieurs éléments de communication tels que la création et la diffusion d’une nouvelle image de marque, l’élaboration d’une campagne de marketing ou de publicité ou la refonte des plateformes web de votre organisation. Veuillez remplir le gabarit ci-après en prenant soin de respecter la limite de six pages prévue pour cette catégorie. Vous pouvez aussi soumettre un document supplémentaire d’information de cinq pages.

Title / Titre

SD43 Student Spaceflight Experiments Program - (a school science project going to the International Space Station)

Start Date / Date de début

July 2016

Completion Date (if applicable) / Date de fin

March 2017

Goal(s) and objective(s) / Buts et objectifs

The goals of the SD43 SSEP program were:

to take advantage of a unique, once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity for students where a student-designed science project will go to the International Space Station (ISS) and be performed by astronauts;

to have as many students and teachers engaged as possible;

to promote the project and the winning students to gain PR for them and our school district as a whole. This was an opportunity to showcase our exceptional students and teachers as they engage in this rare project – one of only two Canadian school districts in Canada participated. To achieve our goals, we created an all-inclusive communications plan that would first generate interest in the community because we needed to raise $25,000 USD to pay for the technical requirements related to sending a science project to space. We then generated interest among the student/teacher base across the entire district to earn positive media coverage.

Research and situation analysis / Recherche et analyse

In July 2016, the school district’s Community Relations Department was approached by a group of teachers who had put applied for the school district’s participation in the SSEP program. While they had been tentatively accepted, they needed to raise $25,000 USD and then implement a broad communications plan to raise awareness for student engagement, celebrate the outcomes, and generate media positive coverage and PR. Our department analyzed the opportunity and determined that such a unique opportunity had potential to be a major point of pride for the school district and a way to highlight the very bright and creative minds of our student and teachers. We also realized the positive impact this could have on our international student recruitment. Our school district would be the only one in Western Canada and one of only two in all of Canada selected for this prestigious opportunity. We believed we could garner substantial local and regional media attention as well (which we did). This was also an opportunity where, by telling the right stories, we could successfully engage with our student base and get them excited to be involved in an academic-based district-wide project. After a thorough time-cost-benefit analysis, we decided to move forward on the project.

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Target Audience / Public cible

Primary audiences: initially organizations as donors to raise funds from; students and teachers to engage in developing the science experiment proposals; and media to publish and promote the great news. Secondary audiences: parents to support their children, community members to consume the great news.

Describe your strategy / Décrivez votre stratégie

Our communications strategy involved reaching out to three distinct primary audiences with different objectives. Our first primary audience was donors. We needed to raise $25,000 USD to pay for the technical requirements related to sending a science project to space. We developed a letter, project overview, and a donor benefits package. Our team (Community Relations and the teacher project coordinator) then approached donors (universities, scientific, technology organizations). We wanted only one university and positioned this prestigious opportunity with the primary partner benefits for a single $10,000-15,000 donation – which we attained from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby B.C. The remaining funds were raised from only four other donors - testimony to excellent fundraising done in a short period of time (5 weeks) for this unique opportunity. Our second primary audience was our students and teachers. We need to create awareness, interest and excitement in the project to generate a large number of students to become involved (we generated 277 team proposals from over 1600 grade 5-12 students). To organize and manage the academic aspects of the project we needed teachers involved to organize their schools, grades and teams. This also created a sense of pride and friendly competition between schools to see who would win the ultimate prize – their project going to the ISS. Our third primary audience was the media to help us co-promote it locally, regionally and perhaps nationally. With this project being so unique and prideworthy, it was important for us to connect with and promote to our broad stakeholder base of parents, employees, community members and others.

How did you execute the strategy? / Expliquez la mise en œuvre de votre stratégie

Phase 1: was to set up a specific web presence for the program. This was critical because, inevitably, we understood that all of our target audiences would be looking online to gain more information. We also wanted a dedicated webpage for the program to post updates, news, pictures, videos, and the media coverage we gained as part of the overall strategy to build pride and celebrate this prestigious opportunity. This page was set up at https://www.sd43.bc.ca/Pages/Space.aspx. Phase 2: begin reaching out to our three large, local universities and a small handful of corporations for their financial support in partnering with us on this. We informed them of the opportunity and benefits available to their organizations to be involved in this exciting and leading-edge project. This involved the creation of custom letters, an overview document, and a donor benefits package. Outreach was mainly through personal contact. Phase 3: Reaching out to schools and teachers to get them organized and then reaching out to students to engage in the actual academic portion of the overall project – developing the science experiment of which one would be chosen to go to the International Space Station. Phase 4: launching our promotions and communications plans through a media release, web-based announcement, social media posts, letters to schools, teachers and parents, and email. In September 2016 we organized an “information, learning and mentoring” event for all interested students and teachers to gain insights and knowledge about the types of experiments that could be done in zero-gravity. SFU students and professors mentored our K-12 students – so it really was a true collaborative partnership and community

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engagement opportunity as well. PR and media coverage was generate by each of these phases and events. In December a second event was later co-organized with our university donor (SFU) as a celebration of the three finalist teams and the winning team to showcase their unique science experiment proposals. Traditional media as well as new media (online, social, video) were utilized for promoting and celebrating these events. Local, regional and national media followed up on the programs with print stories, as well as radio and television interviews of the winning team of two students from Riverside Secondary School. A list of key media stories can be found at https://www.sd43.bc.ca/Pages/Space.aspx. Due to numerous technical delays, the launch will occur in August of 2017, however the project coordination, fundraising, promotion and communications was all done within the awards timeline and before April 2017.

How did you evaluate the project? Comment avez-vous évalué le projet ?

In evaluating the success of the project, we primarily focused on whether or not our target goals were met. Specifically, we reviewed the success of our fundraising strategy leading to securing the necessary funds from our community supporters and their continued support throughout the process; the promotion, engagement, and interest generated with our students to take part in the project; and the subsequent conventional and online and social media coverage we received for our efforts. It is evident we succeeded because we raised the $25,000 USD finds quickly, organized a large number of teachers and students who engaged from many schools, and generated several positive media articles and coverage. We generate over 30,000 impression/engagements on Facebook and Twitter, 1,631 website pageviews, 713 YouTube video views and positive feedback overall was received via email and in person from many people involved and in the community overall.

Resources (human and financial) / Ressources humaines et financières

Key human resources involved in organizing, managing and implementing aspects of this project included:

Fundraising, Marketing and Communications:

Peter Chevrier – Manager, Community Relations

Daniel Fung – Communications & Social Media Assistant

Academic Organization and Implementation Co-Leaders:

Michelle Ciolfitto - Coordinator, Curriculum Implementation

Brent Raabe - Teacher, Dr. Charles Best Secondary

Wooje Choi – Teacher, Dr. Charles Best Secondary

While the project involved collaboration between two primary groups within SD43, including members of the district’s Community Relations Department as well as the three teachers who acted as project leaders, there were several other people. These included people from SFU, SD43 teachers and administrators from schools , parents, and others who all contributed in other small ways in helping make the project a success overall. No additional external human resources were required to execute the program. No contractors were used. As the cost for participation in the program was funded by the community partners, there were no direct costs incurred related to any of the project aspects. The labour was sunk costs being done by existing employees, the rooms used for events were free (although SFU did cater snacks and refreshments for one event at their cost). All materials including letters, brochures, websites, posters, signage used during events were all created in-house so they did not incur any direct financial costs (except paper and toner which are negligible sunk costs).

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Describe the results / Décrivez les résultats obtenus

In terms of reaching each of our set goals, this project was a complete success. Our outreach efforts to our corporate community was so successful that we actually had to turn down requests from some organizations because others were willing to pay for exclusivity in certain categories. Our project supporters were also very engaged in the process throughout serving as panelists in judging, while Simon Fraser University (our primary partner donor) was in particular engaged mentoring our students, hosting our finalist celebration event, and syndicating our media coverage for the program. The program was extremely well-received by our students, teachers and administrators leading to an large amount of program participation. In total, in the span of just two months where students had the opportunity to submit their proposals, 277 team proposals from over 1600 grade 5-12 students were received and reviewed. A component to this project also included students involved in an artwork competition to design 2 “mission patches” that would be used by astronauts to commemorate the mission and the science experiment being done. This was promoted and was also very successful in generating student involvement and media coverage. See the mission patch designs below. Our story also generated significant coverage in the mainstream media, not only from our local community paper – The Tri-City News – but also from several other sources that typically do not engage our school district for positive stories. These included 24 Hours Vancouver, Metro News, Simon Fraser University News, and the CBC. The latter went above and beyond and conducted interviews with the winning teams on their radio and television platforms, respectively.

Additional documentation / Documentation additionnelle (5 pages maximum)

Our SD43 SSEP website: http://www.sd43.bc.ca/Pages/space.aspx The official NCESSE SSEP program website, for more information if needed: http://ssep.ncesse.org/2016/09/ssep-mission-11-to-the-international-space-station-has-begun-welcome-aboard-to-13500-participating-students-across-21-communities-in-the-u-s-and-canada/ Links to videos: SD43 PRODUCED VIDEO - https://youtu.be/NayKwDfvhzE (SSEP learning and mentoring event for participating students at SD43’s Heritage Woods Secondary) SD43 SFU PRODUCED VIDEO (with SD43 guiding development) https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2017/sfu-helps-high-school-experiment-go-to-space.html (Celebration of winners event at Simon Fraser University – largest donor partner)

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Project Lead-off Imagery Used on Website and other Collateral Materials

Project Student Meetings and Winner Unveiling Events

Winning Student Artwork for the “Mission Patches” that will be made

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RELATED COMMUNICATIONS MATERIALS LIST Materials and documents we created as part of the overall project fundraising, management, communications, events, and celebration aspects of the entire project. Due to page limits, we have submitted this list.

SSEP Project Overview

Project Implementation Plan

Promotions and Communications Work Plan

Partnership Fundraising Invitation Letter - Corporations

Partnership Fundraising Invitation Letter - University

Donor Benefits and Communications Procedure Overview

SSEP learning and mentoring event at Heritage Woods Secondary (YouTube video)

Two event posters (for the event up at SFU)

Initial media release

Announcement of the top-eight and three finalist

Certificates for each of the top-eight teams

Speeches for the Board Chair and Superintendent at the SSEP event at SFU

Media release announcing winning team or 2 students

Acknowledgement of Donation

Mission Patch competition information sheet

PARTNERSHIP FUNDRAISING INVITATION LETTER – University (a separate customized letter was also done for corporations)

Dear Academic Leader School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) is inviting you to partner with us in a science experiment that will be conducted on the International Space Station (ISS). As the most successful school district in BC, SD43 is proud to announce that we have been selected from school districts across North America to send an experiment to space and we would be pleased to have your university join us in this project. This experiment is part of an international STEM education program that would engage at least 1,300 SD43 students in real microgravity experiment design and proposal writing. It would culminate with one of our student-proposed experiments launching to the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit to be conducted by the astronauts, with the subsequent data analysis performed by our students. The experiment would be part of a payload for Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) Mission 11 to the ISS, and would launch on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, adjoining NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in late Spring 2017. The benefits for your organization in partnering with SD43 include:

An opportunity to be part of a science experiment conducted on the International Space Station.

Donated funds will receive a charitable tax receipt from School District No. 43 (Coquitlam).

Your stakeholders can be involved as judges or mentors for our students on this project.

Supporting STEM research in the K-12 education sector by engaging with students in this region.

Promoting your organization as a leader in and supporter of STEM research and education.

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Leveraging this partnership in support of the public relations activities and brand of your organization.

Other opportunities for collaboration between our two organizations. Although this is a not-for-profit endeavor, the project requires $24,000 USD to meet technical requirements for the experiment to go to space. Donated funds, which will receive a charitable tax receipt, will be used for technical tests, preparation and storage of the experiment in preparation for the launch, and transportation to and from the ISS. None of the initial $24,000 will be used towards funding teacher or student needs. Imagine the positive impact this educational experience would have on the participating students, and your organization’s pride and community engagement activities when you consider partnering with us. We are under a critical deadline to meet a NASA launch schedule, with funding or formal letters of committed funding due August 28, 2016. The attached backgrounder offers more information on this opportunity. We would be pleased to speak with you further on this exceptional opportunity to partner with us on a science experiment on the ISS. Feel free to contact me at: 604-916-3602 or MCiolfitto@sd43.bc.ca

MEDIA RELEASE

SD43 to send student-designed experiment to International Space Station (Coquitlam, BC – September, 14, 2016) School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) has been selected to take part in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) run by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and will be providing a student-designed science experiment to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit. The experiment will be conducted by the astronauts, with the subsequent data analysis performed by SD43 students. Over 1,600 SD43 students from grades 5 to 12 will work in teams of three to five during a nine-week period from September to November to design and submit experiment proposals. The winning proposal will be selected on December 15, 2016. The experiment would be part of the SSEP Mission 11 payload to the ISS, and is currently planned to launch on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, adjoining the Kennedy Space Center, Spring/Summer 2017. “This is an incredible opportunity for our school district to take part in an innovative program that integrates B.C.’s new education curriculum with SD43’s pedagogical approach to science education,” said Judy Shirra, Chair of the SD43 Board. “This is an opportunity our students will embrace and cherish, and I commend all those who have worked diligently to make this project possible.” SSEP uses a commercial spaceflight payload, which will contain the SSEP student experiments, and which will be placed aboard ferry vehicles for transfer to the ISS. This student experiment flight opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks, LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a formal Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the ISS as a National Laboratory. SD43 is one of only 2 Canadian participants chosen for this mission, the other being out of Manitoba. Each participant is provided a flight certified, microgravity research mini-laboratory and launch services to get that mini-lab containing one student team designed microgravity experiment to the International Space Station and have an astronaut operate the experiment.

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Each participant also has a core team of educators that first delivers a fully established microgravity curriculum to hundreds of students; from there the students form formal research teams of 3-5 students. The resulting teams vie for one of three community finalist experiment slots provided through formal experiment design and proposal writing, mirroring how professional researchers secure limited research assets - through a formal call for proposals. Review of all finalist proposals culminates with the SSEP National Step 2 Review Board meeting at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, selecting one flight experiment from each participating community. “The opportunity to take part in this project has already generated significant interest within our school community,” said Michelle Ciolfitto, Learning Services Coordinator with SD43 who is one of three project co-leaders alongside science teachers Wooje Choi and Brent Raabe from Dr. Charles Best Secondary School. “SSEP is a remarkable opportunity for our school district to engage in authentic STEM applications. This is not a simulation – this is the real space program. This is very real immersion in real research.” Funding for SD43 students and schools to take part in the project has been generously provided by several supporting organizations including Simon Fraser University, Magellan Aerospace (a Canadian National Partner on SSEP), Fingerfood Studios, Urthecast, and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates. “As Canada’s engaged university, SFU is thrilled to help students of School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) prepare for this rare opportunity,” says SFU President Andrew Petter. “Our faculty and researchers will assist students to create experiments and encourage them to see the value of entering science, technology, engineering and mathematic fields.” In addition to submitting project proposals, SD43 students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 will have the opportunity to submit a design for a “Mission Patch” that may, if selected, also fly aboard the ISS. Key Events / Timeline:

September 6 to November 4, 2016 – 9-week experiment design phase

November/December – Internal school competitions and events

December 15, 2016 – winning flight experiment is selected (and Mission Patch logo)

Spring 2017 (projected) – Experiment travels to ISS with a 4-to-6 week Return-to-Earth

Early July 2017 (projected) – National Conference at Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC More updates on the project can be found on the SD43 website at: www.sd43.bc.ca/pages/space.aspx. The Student Space Flight Experiments Program (SSEP) (http://ssep.ncesse.org) is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) http://ncesse.org) in partnership with Nanoracks, LLC. This on-orbit educational research opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks, LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.

-30- Media Relations Contact Peter Chevrier - Community Relations Manager, School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) Tel: 604-937-6777 | Email: pchevrier@sd43.bc.ca

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CUSTOM WEBSITE

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SD43 PRODUCED VIDEO - https://youtu.be/NayKwDfvhzE (SSEP learning and mentoring event for participating students at SD43’s Heritage Woods Secondary)

SD43 CO-PRODUCED VIDEO (with SFU) https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2017/sfu-helps-high-school-experiment-go-to-space.html

(Celebration of winners event at Simon Fraser University – largest donor partner)

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MEDIA COVERAGE / POSITIVE OUTCOMES SSEP Community Network Hubsite: Selected Experiments on SSEP Mission 11 to ISS

SFU News (Jan. 9, 2017): SFU helps high school experiment go to space

CBC News (Dec. 21, 2016): PoCo students' research blasting off to International Space Station

CBC News Vancouver at 6 (Dec. 21, 2016): Interview with Brenda Shen and Alexa Durand (begins at 23:20)

CBC's On the Coast (Dec. 21, 2016): Radio interview with Brenda Shen and Alexa Durand

Tri-City News (Dec. 21, 2016): Port Coquitlam students' experiment off to space

Metro News (Dec. 20, 2016): Coquitlam students design experiment for International Space Station

Tri-City News (Nov. 17, 2016): Finalists named in space experiment contest

Canada NewsWire (Oct. 31, 2016): Magellan announces successful launch of student space experiments

Tri-City News (Sept. 23, 2016): Space race for Tri-City students

24 Hours Vancouver (Sept. 22, 2016): Coquitlam kids plan experiments for space