National Space Club
Press Release
The National Space Club and Foundation proudly announces that, after a nation-wide search, Parker Arntsen-Beaudin has won the National Space Club & Foundation’s Keynote Scholarship, securing her role as the keynote speaker during the Club's 65th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner scheduled for Friday, March 18, 2022 at the Washington Hilton.
Ms. Arntsen-Beaudin is a high school senior at Northern Waters Environmental School (NWES), an environmental charter school in Hayward, Wisconsin. She is also dual enrolled as a science major at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe College, where she holds a Team Lead position for the college’s First Nations Launch team, a NASA annual competition offering Tribal Colleges and Universities the opportunity to demonstrate engineering and design skills in high-power rocketry. Passionate about the arts, Ms. Arntsen-Beaudin has also won several art competitions and serves as President of her school’s art club. Additionally, she serves as coordinator for the Friends of the Eau Claire Lakes Area’s Lake Ecology Education Program, an award-winning environmental education program for middle school students.
In the fall of 2022, Ms. Arntsen-Beaudin plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison with aspirations of pursuing a doctorate in environmental science. Her life aspiration is to be an environmental researcher and advocate for environmental conservation, and she hopes to inspire other Native Americans, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to pursue careers in STEM.
Ms. Arntsen-Beaudin attributes much of her success to her teacher, Mrs. Brittany Hager, and has invited her to join in the celebration of her accomplishment at the Goddard Memorial Dinner. Mrs. Hager serves as the Director of NWES, and her experiences include working as a field intern for the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association, teaching environmental education at Muraviovka Park for Sustainable Land Use in the Amur Region of Russia, and teaching outdoor education summer school courses in Portage. She believes that when students are engaged in projects that they are interested in, learning becomes more applicable and exciting. In the NWES program, Mrs. Hager strongly affirms that students will be inspired to take ownership of their learning and become active members of the greater community.
The Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner is the major event of the Washington, DC space calendar. First celebrated in 1958, it is traditionally held each year near the anniversary of the first successful flight by Dr. Goddard of a liquid-fueled rocket. The dinner brings together nearly 2,000 members of the government, industry and educational space community and is considered the industry's premier gathering of space professionals. In addition to the Keynote Scholarship, the Club presents several awards at the dinner to outstanding individuals for accomplishments in spaceflight, engineering, science, management and education. The premier award, the Goddard Trophy, is presented to the individual, group or program deemed to have made the most significant contribution to U.S. leadership in rocketry and astronautics either as a lifetime of achievement or in the previous calendar year.