432
June 2015
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
PROFESSIONAL
INSIGHT
An interview with Dr. William L. Kiser, Senior
Director of Penn State Electro-Optics Center and
the founder of Sea, Air and Land Challenge. He
is a medical physicist by training and develops
prototype and production imaging systems for
the Department of Defense (DoD) applications.
As a research scientist, he believes exposing
young minds to science, technology, engineering
and math (STEM) will dynamically change the
world and ensure the continued superiority of the
United States military. Dr. Kiser’s passion and
determination to inspire young adults to pursue
careers in STEM education is admirable.
I N T E R V I E W
Why was the Sea Air and Land Challenge developed?
The Sea Air and Land Challenge was developed for several
reasons. The first is to provide high school students,
predominantly juniors and seniors, with an exciting
opportunity to tackle a difficult engineering task while still
in high school. As part of the development, we want them
to embrace good engineering process and work as a team to
achieve fairly lofty performance goals. The other reason is
to provide the students insight into tremendous technical
careers available in the Department of Defense and Armed
Forces. The Defense industry struggles to maintain a
continuous flow of high quality engineers and scientists. It
is also facing daunting retirement possibilities in the next
10 years without a sufficient pipeline for replacing these
experts. If we combine an exciting technical challenge,
with a clear understanding of how the skills learned in the
challenge can eventually be applied to an exciting career
that affects national security, our objectives are met.
How is this program different from other STEM base
programs?
This program focuses on challenges that are relevant to
problems the military encounters and gives the students
a chance to solve these problems. We make sure they
are learning about how to use good processes to achieve
their goals, and start to move them away from “trial
and error” engineering. Plus, we don’t know of any other
STEM activities where the kids get to interact with US
Navy SEALS, US Army Green Berets, and other special
operation forces.
Who designs the challenges?
The scientists and engineers at the Penn State Electro-
Optic Center, our Special Forces collaborators, and our
advisory board, which is comprised of participants from
the military, government, industry and academia.
Are the challenges regional or nationwide?
We are in our third year of the regional challenges;
however we are expanding to three or four other national
sites next year. Our goal is to have the support structure,
(e.g. website, support documents, webinars, and support
networks) sufficiently developed to enable anyone in the
US to utilize the materials to establish their own regional
challenge by August of 2016.
THE SEA, AIR, AND LAND
CHALLENGE
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 81, No. 6, June 2015, pp. 432–440.
0099-1112/15/432–440
© 2015 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.81.6.432
