From July 3 to September 1, 2006, the 19th Summer Session Program (SSP) was held for the 3rd time in its history in the beautiful city of Strasbourg. The 104 enthusiastic participants had backgrounds ranging from physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, information technology, business and management, policy and law, humanities, space applications and architecture with over 53% of them possessing masters or doctorate degrees. Their ages ranged from 20 to 52 years old (with an average age of 30) and this summer 30% of the class was female.

The SSP is an intensive mix of lectures, hands-on activities, professional visits, panel discussions, team projects, workshops, theme days, and assignments. It has been held annually since 1988, in partnership with educational and research institutions around the world. ISU also delivers Masters and professional development programs at the graduate level. All programs reflect the '3I' educational philosophy - interdisciplinary, international and inter-cultural. Additionally ISU graduates are introduced to a strong professional network of more than 2400 ISU alumni in 93 countries.

The nine-week curriculum included a series of core lectures (60 hours), panel discussions (9 hours) and theme days (7 hours) with distinguished speakers, hands-on workshops (33 hours), departmental activities and professional visits in one discipline of choice (33 hours), and culminating in team project work (at least 122 hours).

Participants interacted with over 170 faculty members, visiting lecturers and teaching associates from ISU's own teaching staff, but also from other universities, governments, space agencies and space industry around the world. These experts contributed to the curriculum with lectures, panel discussions, project review boards, workshops and hosting professional visits.

Acknowledgement

The SSP06 would not have been possible without the generous support of the Strasbourg local partners; Communauté Urbaine de Strasbourg, Conseil Régional de Bas-Rhin, and the Région Alsace. In addition, the SSP drew support from leaders in space exploration and development from all corners of the aerospace sector with participation from the major space agencies, CNES, CSA, ESA, JAXA and NASA; to major space companies such as The Boeing Company, Cisco Systems, CASC, EADS, and SES Global; and rising new entrepreneurs such as Virgin Galatic, and X-Prize.