Science Education Enabling Careers II (SEEC II)

For nearly 20 years, the UAB Center for Community OutReach Development (CORD) has conducted SEPA funded research that has greatly enhanced the number of minority students entering the pipeline to college and biomedical careers, e.g., nearly all of CORD’s Summer Research Interns since 1998 (>300) have completed/are completing college and most of them are continuing on to graduate biomedical research and/or clinical training and careers. CORD’s programs that focused on high and middle school students have drawn many minority students into biomedical careers, but a low percentage of minority students benefit from these programs because far too many are already left behind academically in grades 4-6, due, at least in part, to a significant drop in science grades between grades 4 and 6, a drop from which most students never recover. A major contributor to this effect is that most grade 4-6 teachers in predominantly minority schools lack significant formal training in science and often are not fully aware of the great opportunities offered by biomedical careers.

In SEEC II, CORD will deliver intensive inquiry-based science training to grade 4-6 teachers, providing them with science content and hands-on science experiences that will afford their student both content and skills that will make them excited about, and competitive for, the advanced courses needed to move into biomedical research careers. SEEC II will also link teachers together across the elementary/middle school divide and bring the teachers together with administrators and parents, who will experience firsthand the excitement that inquiry learning brings and the significant advancement it provides in science and in reading and math. At monthly meetings and large annual celebrations, the parents, teachers and administrators will learn about the opportunities that biomedical careers can provide for the student who is well prepared. They will also consider the financial and educational steps required to ensure that students have the ability to reach these professions.

SEEC II will also expand CORD’s middle school LabWorks and Summer Science Camps to include grade 4-5 students and provide the teachers with professional learning in informal settings. During summer training, in small groups, the teachers will expand one of the inquiry-based science activities that they complete in the training, and they will use these in their classrooms and communicate with the others in their group to perfect these experiences in the school year. Finally, the teachers and grade 4-5 students will develop science and engineering fair-type research projects with which they will compete both on the school level and at the annual meeting. Thus, the students will share with their parents the excitement that science brings. The Intellectual Merit of SEEC II will be to test a model to enhance grade 4-6 teacher development and vertical alignment, providing science content, exposure to biomedical scientists and training in participatory science experiments, thus positioning teachers to succeed. The Broader Impacts will include the translation and testing of a science education model to assist minority students to avoid the middle school plunge and reach biomedical careers.

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