Project WET Maryland Coordinator Cindy Etgen traveled to Kazakhstan to watch Astronaut Ricky Arnold's launch to ISS As usual in a network that encompasses all 50 U.S. states and trains more than 10,000 teachers to reach hundreds of thousands of students each year, the Project WET USA Network in 2018 reached educators and students with a wide variety of innovative programming. Here's a tiny sampling of their work and the stories told about it:

• Arizona Project WET’s Aqua STEM program includes the Aqua STEM Academy, School Water Audit and Rainwater Harvesting System Design components, offering teacher training and experiential student learning. Arizona Project WET also held 22 water festivals in nine counties across the state, reaching 14,047 fourth grade student participants, along with 533 of their teachers. 
• In Tennessee, art teacher Kathryn Vaughn has been using Project WET with her after-school programsince 2016. She says that Project WET helps her engage her students in so many ways, since most of them do not spend any (other) time outside: “I can see them enjoying nature and learning through hands-on activities.”
• In Idaho, Project WET Coordinator Jim Ekins is using Project WET as part of two citizen science initiatives and another Project WET Coordinator, Cindy Busche, celebrated 10 years of Project WET with a community water festival that engaged 200 people with STEM activities such as hydraulic rockets, pipe mazes, filter-building and water testing.
• The K-8 Hamburg School in New Jersey held its first water festival this year, reaching about 500 students Three Make a Splash Water Festivals were held this spring in New Jersey. All three had their own unique design and, combined, the festivals reached over 2,100 participants!
• California Coordinator Brian Brown wrote about the importance of the San Joaquin Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for #AstroFriday, noting that “If you can name a water issue, the Delta is probably involved in it.”
• Project WET Maryland Coordinator Cindy Etgen had a front-row seat, literally, to Astronaut Ricky Arnold’s liftoff to the International Space Station. She and her husband, Lou, are longtime personal friends of the Arnold family and were invited to be a part of Ricky’s journey to the ISS.
• We also said fond farewells to several retiring PWUSA Coordinators.