No Boundaries is a national competition sponsored by USA Today

USA Today

USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

and NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

. It encourages high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 students to learn about careers in science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

, engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

, and mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 (the STEM fields

STEM fields

STEM fields is a US Government acronym for the fields of study in the categories of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The acronym is in use regarding access to work visas for immigrants who are skilled in these fields. Maintaining a citizenry that is well versed in the STEM fields...

).

Students may enter individually, or as a group of up to four. Entrants create a project about a career in STEM, which may vary greatly in format. In 2008, the first place group of four made a Power-Point presentation called "It's Electric", about electrical engineering. In 2009, the contest was won by four girls who created a website about astrobiology

Astrobiology

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry,...

. The group who won the second place prize in 2009 made a "cookbook" with recipes for how to become a food scientist for NASA; third place that year created a simple home-made yarn-bound storybook. First place winners receive $2000 dollars to split between members of a group, and a trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Kennedy Space Center

The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA installation that has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968. Although such flights are currently on hiatus, KSC continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program...

.