The realization of a Challenger Learning Center in Glenview is another one of the more important goals of the Foundation since its inception. In 2000, Hangar One obtained a license from the Challenger Center for Space Science Education to operate a Challenger Learning Center in Northern Illinois. Founded by the families of the Challenger 51-L crew, after the Challenger disaster in 1986, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education’s mission is for middle-school aged students to be inspired, to explore and learn in a space oriented, hands on simulator environment that promotes a lifetime interest in mathematics, science and technology related fields. There are approximately 46 Challenger Learning Centers located throughout the world, including one in Woodstock IL and one in Bloomington, IL. Staffed by master teachers, the core of a Challenger Learning Center is a two-room simulator, consisting of a space station and a mission control center patterned after NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and a scientific space lab ready for exploration. Hangar One believes the realization of a Challenger Learning Center in Glenview will enable certain students, from schools located in the greater Chicagoland area, to achieve ranks at the highest educational levels in the United States, in the areas of physical sciences and mathematics.

Hangar One’s original goal was to realize a Naval Air Station Glenview Museum and Challenger Learning Center in a renovated Hangar One at the Glen Town Center. Hangar One believed a combined Naval Air Station Glenview Museum and Challenger Learning Center was a project maximizing way to promote quality education in the areas of military history, especially in context to the profound contributions made by Naval Air Station Glenview, and in the future of aerospace in the areas of the physical sciences and mathematics, in context to space exploration.

All of the programs conducted at Challenger Learning Centers utilize the same robust educational models that emphasize educational content, cooperative learning, problem-solving, and responsible decision-making. An adventure at a Challenger Learning Center is not just a field trip, the experience begins well before the actual visit to the Center’s simulators, consisting of a space station patterned after the Space Shuttle and a mission control center patterned after NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and its scientific space lab.

Pre-Visit Activities: Teachers participate in a one-day in-service training program designed to prepare their students in advance for their mission, including materials to help students understand the thematic topic of their simulated mission.

The Mission: When students arrive at the Challenger Learning Center, a short briefing is held in which students first hear what their critical mission is going to be, and they are given their individual Space Lab and Mission Control assignments. Assignments include: Return to the Moon; Rendezvous with a Comet; Encounter Earth; and Voyage to Mars. The group is divided in two, with one half taking their stations in Mission Control and the other half “beaming up” to the Space Lab. Halfway through the mission, the students exchange places so everyone has an opportunity to experience both Mission Control and the Space Lab. Each assignment contains a mission program that incorporates expected outcomes and emergencies so students have an opportunity to build skill-sets in the areas of teamwork and communications.

Post-visit Activities: When the mission is over and the students return to school, there are specific programs designed to help extend the experience, such as further analysis and discussion on the data gathered from the experience.

A Challenger Learning Center also provides programs to educate teachers through the Foundations sponsored by the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.

“Imagination is just as important as knowledge. Every day, in classrooms around the world, stars are being born. They are students of today, the leaders of tomorrow, inspired and nurtured by their teachers”. For more information on the concept of the Challenger Learning Center, please visit its website at www.challenger.org.

When the goal of a Naval Air Station Glenview Museum and Challenger Learning Center in a renovated Hangar One at the Glen Town Center became economically unfeasible, the Glenview Hangar One Foundation concentrated on working to preserve the control tower and north and south pod facades of Hangar One, along with certain structural components. In addition, Glenview Hangar One focused on facilitated the development of Navy Park, and the inclusion of NASG memorabilia into the Glen. We believe the final result of the Glen truly represents a Memorial to Freedom to the veterans of Naval Air Station Glenview, and to all of the men and women who served, or have served in the armed forces of the US.

Hangar One has made the realization of a Challenger Learning Center, in Glenview, at the Glen near Navy Park one platform goal. A Challenger Learning Center Committee has been formed and is currently identifying the strategic partners and political and financial support necessary, to take the Challenger Learning Center Program materially closer to execution.