NASA administrator's fellowship program (NAFP): Panel discussion and fellow presentations

The NASA Administrator's Fellowship Program (NAFP) research grant is awarded to faculty fellows upon the completion of their one-year resident research at a NASA center. The award provided a unique research opportunity, which is rarely available for faculty and students at community college level, for the author to conduct a research project at a community college. With the support of the NAFP faculty research award, the author was able to not only continue the NASA related research on optimum machining parameters, but also get students involved in the research project. In this paper, the author presents the research project and experimental results. In addition, he shares his experiences of how to engage and supervise community college students in research as well as lessons learned from the process.