Why such a long name?

I thought I would take a moment and explain why our program is called the Cache Valley Space Education Center. You'll notice that much of it has been adapted from the original space center, the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. The Pleasant Grove space center was helped in their development by a grant from The Christa McAuliffe Fellowship in 1990. Since their goals are hand in hand with ours there was no real reason to come up with something new when the title carries so much meaning already.

So why Cache Valley? I'm sure we could rearrange the name should a sizable donation come along. I don't have any problems being the Steve Jobs Society for Space Explorers. Joking aside, naming it after the valley describes several things about it. For one, even though we aren't getting started with a grant, we will be supported by the volunteers who put in their time to develop the program. These volunteers are going to be parents, teachers, and students from the valley. The second part answers who we are serving - the students of our amazing community.

Cache Valley also describes where our program is located. So why not call it the Nibley or Thomas Edison space center? Well, no one knows where Nibley is unless you are from the valley. Thomas Edison is doing a lot to help this program get started, and without the work that the administrators and volunteers have put in we wouldn't have a chance to start this program. That being said we get back to those whom we hope to serve. We want to have all of the students in the area enjoy this experience and Thomas Edison has caught the vision and is allowing us to work with them and use their facilities to make this possible.

Now for the rest of the title, I think it is a bit more obvious. The platform in which we teach science, social studies, the arts, and all other subject matter is done in a simulated space ship. So if you have a central location in which to educate students using the wonderment of space, you end up with Space Education Center. Put all of that together and you end up with our working title, the Cache Valley Space Education Center.

A quick note when mentioning putting things together. Truly this is a community project and will become a community resource. Nobody personally gains from a program like this. The hours go uncounted as far as payment or any sort of financial gratification is concerned. Our non-profit organization is here to provide a service to the community and will only survive with the help of caring individuals who want to build for our students an amazing program. Thank you for everyone who has voiced their support and already started putting in hours of service to get this program started. A special thanks goes to Mr. Williamson and the outstanding volunteers who have built up an unique program in Pleasant Grove and for supporting our efforts to create one to enjoy in our community.