ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — The following article comes courtesy of Essex County College. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.

Working in pairs, the dozen Essex County College faculty members carefully examined their LEGO models, simulating rovers on the surface of Mars. They listened intently as Laura Jackson, from LEGO Education, instructed them on where to place the models on the table. When everything was set, the light on the models glowed while it move a few inches where it would "pick up" objects on the surface.

The exercise was not all fun and games. This recent session on the Essex campus was training for the faculty, who will serve as mentors and judges in the next phase of the College's participation in the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) program. Essex is one of only six community colleges nation-wide participating in the program. This past summer, students took part in a five-week online activity at Essex as a warmup to the next phase of the program.

Next up is the October 15-19 Essex campus event in which 25 students will compete for building the future LEGO Rover to Mars, said Dr. Nidhal Marashi, Chemistry professor and project coordinator for the College. She said 20 of the students are from Essex, while the remaining five are from Virginia and Texas. Dr. Marashi, Division of Biology, Chemistry and Physics Chair Dr. Eunice Kamunge, and Physics Professor Dr. Nadia Lvov, have been training with NASA since October 2018 to bring NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars Program to Essex County College.

Students will be broken into four teams with six to seven members, establishing fictional companies interested in Mars exploration. Each team is responsible for developing and testing a prototype rover, forming a company infrastructure, managing a budget, and developing a communications and outreach plan.

Dr Marashi said the students will be working on their projects 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. each day, with a trip to the Intrepid Museum in New York. Students will also hear from guest speakers from NASA, Rutgers University and NJIT, and private industry. On October 19, the five, four-member teams will test their rovers as they move their EV3 LEGO models around the simulated surface of Mars, in the 4th Floor Multi-Purpose Room, retrieving various objects and bringing them back to their "home" bases.

Participants in the recent faculty training worked with pre-assembled LEGO models, said Dr. Jeffrey Lee, Vice President of Academic Affairs/CAO, who took part in the session. "The students will be building their models from scratch," he noted. "The training was professional development for our faculty," said Dr. Marashi. She added the training culminated with a certificate of completion on EV3 LEGO training.