Aviation High students Thomas Malchodi, Andrew May, Andrew Reece, and Michael Thompson are graduates of the 2009 Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) summer residency hosted by The Museum of Flight in Tukwila.

WAS is a competitive educational program for high school juniors from across Washington state.

Aviation High is temporarily housed at the Olympic site in Des Moines. Plans are underway to build a new school across from the flight museum. The Highline School District administers the school.

They were among the 150 students who qualified for the summer residency program from 260 students who applied in November.

To qualify for the residency program, they spent six months studying a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum via the Internet.

Based on their academic performance on the distance-learning lessons, they were selected to attend one of the four residencies hosted at Tukwila's flight museum.

During the residency experience, they collaborated with the other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars. WAS scholars are guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators as they plan these missions.

The WAS program is designed to inspire students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math but the students are divided into teams which also require them to learn about mission management, budgets, the legal aspects of space exploration, and medicine.

As graduates of WAS, Malchodi, May, Reece and Thompson join over 380 alumni representing 170 different Washington high schools.
The program began accepting applications in early September for the 2009-10 program cycle; visit www.museumofflight.org/washingtonaerospacescholars to download an application.

WAS participants must be high school juniors with 3.0 minimum grade-point-averages, United States citizens and Washington state residents. The deadline for student applications is Nov. 6.