History
In 1959, less than two years after the launch of Sputnik 1 marking the start of the Space Race, officials at Thacher and Caltech were concerned that the country's top high school students were not being adequately informed and inspired about careers in the physical sciences. They decided to create an intense summer program to challenge such students and inspire them with a taste of "real science." They received assistance from a number of leading California colleges, including Caltech, UCLA, Claremont Colleges, and Stanford. Financial support came from Hughes Aircraft.
SSP was taught in its first year by Dr. Paul Routly. He continued with SSP until 1962. In 1960, Dr. George Abell joined the program for his first of more than 20 summers at SSP.
The first year, SSP had 26 students. The students used data from the "Russian ephemeris" (Ephemyeredi Mahlikh Planyet) to find asteroids to photograph, measured the positions, and submitted the data to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The students were excited to find that when they calculated the orbit of 9 Metis, their data resulted in a significant correction to the Russian ephemeris.
A significant threat to the continuation of SSP came in 1999. The Thacher School decided to make significant changes to its entire program, and SSP no longer fit. 1999 would be the last year the program was held at Thacher. A group of SSP alumni saved the program in the form of a new non-profit corporation, Summer Science Program, Inc. They found funding, largely from the alumni community; and they found a new site for the program. Beginning in 2000, SSP was held at the Happy Valley School, located just across the Ojai Valley from The Thacher School. In 2007, Happy Valley School was renamed Besant Hill School.
With the alumni rescue complete, they soon began looking to expand the program. In 2003 a second campus opened at New Mexico Tech in Socorro with the support of New Mexico Tech, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and others. In 2010, the California campus moved to Westmont College in Santa Barbara.
In 2008, the small group of alumni who engineered the rescue of the program planned for new generations to take over. They converted Summer Science Program, Inc., from a non-profit corporation run by themselves into a membership organization. About 2000 alumni and former faculty and staff make up the membership. A Board of Trustees is elected by the members at an Annual Meeting that takes place each year in conjunction with one of the alumni reunions at each campus.
Read more about this topic: Summer Science Program
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