LIAM PHILLIPS

AFTER being the only school teacher to receive a full scholarship, 2018 Public School Education Award winner for innovation in practice, Mike Hawkey, began his fiveweek stay at the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program last Monday.

The program is run by the International Space University in conjunction with the University of South Australia and provides a wide base of up-to-date knowledge about the space industry, and how it is changing and adapting.

The Two Wells teacher said his long-term goal was to work at the South Australian or national space agency teaching outreach education to groups of students.

He spoke about how exciting the opportunity was to study in such an exclusive course.

“The course itself costs $14,000, so after I was accepted I had to wait try to work out if I could afford to go without the scholarship,” Mr Hawkey said.

“I had some award money left over from the 2018 award I saved, and I’d had trouble spending it because I didn’t just want to just go on a holiday and go to see space museums.

“I was keen on getting space education, but I wanted it to be valuable education, not just go look and see, I wanted to either see how departments were teaching space outreach, or get more
background on space.

“I found out a little while later that I’d received a full scholarship, which was very exciting, and then I just had to convince my boss that it wouldn’t be too disruptive to miss the first three weeks of
school.”

Mr Hawkey has been teaching for a decade, after he spent the first chapter of his career working as an engineer in the defence industry, before deciding that he would prefer to do something more personally satisfying.

“I started off initially as a classroom teacher, but then I found my way into teaching specialist science,” he said.

“Ultimately, I’d like to be able to help teachers, or students, engage more in space education, and this program is a real foot in the door for people who are interested in getting into the space industry.”

As far as what he will be doing in his five week live-in program, Mr Hawkey said that he will have to make some tough decisions.

“I have to choose between making model rockets, and doing stratospheric balloon launches – how do you choose between those two?” he said.

“They’re both awesome.”