The Undergraduate Student Instrumentation Project (USIP) was a NASA program to engage undergraduate students in rigorous scientific research, for the purposes of innovation and developing the next generation of professionals in space research. The program is student led and executed from initial ideation of research objectives to the design and deployment of scientific payloads. The University of Houston was selected twice to participate in the USIP programs. The first program (USIP_UH I) ran from 2013 to 2016. USIP_UH II ran from 2016 to 2019. USIP_UH I (USIP_UH II) at the University of Houston was composed of eight (seven) research teams developing six (seven), distinct, balloon-based scientific instruments. This project was a for-credit course two years in duration. The program has been so successful in terms of improved student career outcomes the University has decided to continue the project with purely local funding. The pandemic has produced a substantial instructional challenge since this project is a lab class! The virtual classroom that we designed to meet this need provides tools for ongoing collaboration, revisions, storage, project planning, systems engineering, and a tool to request immediate feedback from faculty and fellow researchers. Additionally, the classroom provides an ongoing place to store data from different students for many years. New students can use this continuity in a consistent and secure way. We also provided tools for conferencing and communication. A combination of several tools were selected and customized to meet this need. These tools include Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Git, Groupme, and Zoom.

This paper will report on the effects of an extreme space weather event. On January 20th, 2005, a balloon-borne experiment intended to measure relativistic electron precipitation and its effects was aloft over Antarctica (~32 km; near 70º S, 345º W geographic) throughout the duration of the solar energetic particle (SEP) event. The balloon carried an x-ray scintillation counter, dc electric field, and scalar electrical conductivity sensors. Intense energetic proton precipitation and large increases in the energetic proton population of the outer radiation belts were observed by a global array of observatories and spacecraft. The stratospheric conductivity increased by nearly a factor of 20 above ambient at the time of the SEP event onset and returned to within a factor of two above normal levels within 17 hours. The electric field decreased to near zero following the increase in particle flux at SEP onset. Combined with an atmospheric electric field mapping model, these data are consistent with a shorting out of the global electric circuit and point toward substantial ionospheric convection modifications. It is shown that the conductivity profile predicted by the Sodankylä Ion and Neutral Chemistry (SIC) model does not shield the balloon payload at 32 km from the ionospheric horizontal field. Thus, the data really do indicate a very low level of ionospheric convection over the balloon during the 6 hours following the SEP event. We have used global magnetometer and satellite data to interpret the changes in the vertical field as indicators of large scale convection changes.