This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of an interdisciplinary graduate training program in Cognitive, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience at Washington University in Saint Louis. Understanding how the brain works under normal circumstances and how it fails are among the most important problems in science. The purpose of this program is to train a new generation of systems-level neuroscientists who will combine experimental and computational approaches from the fields of psychology, neurobiology, and engineering to study brain function in unique ways. Students will participate in a five-course core curriculum that provides a broad base of knowledge in each of the core disciplines, and culminates in a pair of highly integrative and interactive courses that emphasize critical thinking and analysis skills, as well as practical skills for developing interdisciplinary research projects. This program also includes workshops aimed at developing the personal and professional skills that students need to become successful independent investigators and educators, as well as outreach programs aimed at communicating the goals and promise of integrative neuroscience to the general public. This training program will be tightly coupled to a new research focus involving neuro-imaging in nonhuman primates. By building upon existing strengths at Washington University, this research and training initiative will provide critical new insights into how the non-invasive measurements of brain function that are available in humans (e.g. from functional MRI) are related to the underlying activity patterns in neuronal circuits of the brain. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kurt ThoroughmanGregory DeAngelisRandy BucknerSteven PetersenDora Angelaki
"Local Investigations of Natural Science (LIONS)" engages grade 5-8 students from University City schools, Missouri in structured out-of-school programs that provide depth and context for their regular classroom studies. The programs are led by district teachers. A balanced set of investigations engage students in environmental research, computer modeling, and advanced applications of mathematics. Throughout, the artificial boundary between classroom and community is bridged as students use the community for their studies and resources from local organizations are brought into school. Through these projects, students build interest and awareness of STEM-related career opportunities and the academic preparation needed for success.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert CoulterEric KlopferJere Confrey
This research oriented project integrates the informal and formal science education sectors, bringing their combined resources to bear on the critical need for well-prepared and diverse urban science teachers. It represents a partnership among The City College of New York (CCNY), the New York Hall of Science (NYHOS), and the City University of New York Center for Advanced Study in Education (CUNY-CASE). It integrates the Science Career Ladder, a sustained program of informal science teaching training and employment at the NYHOS, with the CCNY science teacher preparation program. The longitudinal and comparative research study being conducted is designed to examine and document the effect of this integrated program on the production of urban science teachers. Outcomes from this study include a new body of research related to the impact of internships in science centers on improving classroom science teaching in urban high schools. Results are being disseminated to both the informal science education community (through the Association for Science and Technology Centers and the Center for Informal Learning in Schools, an NSF supported Center for Learning and Teaching situated at the San Francisco Exploratorium) and the formal education community (through the National Science Teachers Association and the American Educational Research Association).
The Science Career Ladder program engages undergraduates as inquiry-based interpreters (Explainers) for visitors to the NY Hall of Science. Integrating this experience with a formal teacher certification program enables participants to coordinate experiences in the science center, college science and education classes, and K-12 classrooms. Participants receive a license to teach science upon graduating. The approach has its theoretical underpinnings in the concept of situated learning as noted by Kirshner and Whitson (1997, Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic and Psychological Perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum). Through apprenticeship experiences, situated learning recreates the complexity and ambiguity of situations that learners will face in the real world. Science centers provide a potentially ideal setting for situational learning by future teachers, allowing them to develop, exercise and refine their science teaching and learning skills as noted by Gardner (1991, The Unschooled Mind, New York: Basic Books).
There is a well-documented shortage of science teachers in urban school districts. The causes of this shortage relate to all phases of the teacher professional continuum, from recruitment through training and retention. At the same time, the demographic composition of American teachers is increasingly out of synch with the demographics of the student population, raising concerns that a critical shortage of role models may be at hand, contributing to a worsening situation in urban schools. In the face of these challenges many innovative teacher recruitment and teacher preparation programs have been developed to augment traditional pathways to teaching. These programs range from high school academies for students expressing an interest in teaching to the recruitment and training of individuals making mid-life career changes. The CLUSTER program described above represents a new alternative. There are more than 250 science centers in the United States. Many of these have extensive youth internship programs and collaborative relationships with local colleges. Therefore, the proposed model is widely applicable.
Sea Studios Foundation will extend the Strange Days on Planet Earth multimedia initiative to raise public science literacy on pressing environmental issues. Based on pioneering Earth System Science research, Phase Two will be a media and outreach project focused on the ocean and water issues. The goal of the project is to increase public awareness and understanding of the scope and scale of key issues affecting the ocean. At the core of the project is a four part television documentary series for PBS primetime entitled Strange Days, Ocean. The programs will concentrate on four content areas: overexploitation of ocean resources, pollution, coastal development, climate change and the role of the ocean in Earth's system. Each episode is structured around a compelling scientific questions designed to engage the audience in a search for answers based on the most current research from the varied Earth System Science disciplines. The series focuses on explaining how scientists come to know what they know. The series will be complemented by activity-based learning supported by a national consortium of informal learning institutions, a citizen science program, training sessions for informal educators, and a project website. Collaborators include the National Geographic and three new major partners: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Program to expand citizen science programs around invasive species; Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), dedicated to organizing college campus educational events; The Ocean Project (TOP), a network of 600 organizations; plus the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and eight other informal science institutions. Knight Williams Research Communications, and Public Knowledge and Cultural Logic will assess the impact of the series. The project will contribute to the field of informal science education by providing widely applicable communication lessons on ocean and water issues and a model methodology for creating science education media that is credible, informative, and relevant. The results of two unique adult learning case studies will be shared with the field through presentations at national meetings and workshops, and posted online.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark ShelleyDavid EliscoTierney Thys
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific, in collaboration with the Institute for Learning Innovation, will implement "Sharing the Universe." This research and implementation project is designed to include both a comprehensive, two-phased research component, as well as a large-scale national dissemination. The intended impacts are to improve the quality and effectiveness of informal science education activities provided by amateur astronomers; increase the frequency of public engagements in astronomy; and broaden the variety of events and diversity of the outreach to include underserved and underrepresented audiences. The project will create a community of practice using club leaders to improve astronomy clubs nationwide through research tools, training and outreach skills. Project deliverables include Phase I research which is designed to gain an understanding of how outreach-orientated clubs function and identify strategies that make successful clubs effective. Phase II will examine a core group of 20 clubs in detail to further understand the outreach culture while using interventions developed from the Phase I results such as a training DVD, Online Resource Library, Outreach Toolkit and a robust community of practice. The final deliverable will be the dissemination of proven strategies and best practices revealed by the research to 200 diverse astronomy clubs across the country. Strategic impact will be realized in increased outreach capacity among amateur astronomers and a strong model for astronomy clubs with proven best practices and resources. It is anticipated this project will reach more than 4,400 amateur astronomers and indirectly impact more than one million Americans in astronomy clubs in four years. Inverness Research will conduct the summative evaluation of the project.
Brown University, a founding member of the 72-member New England Science Center Collaborative (NESCC), is leading Seasons of Change, a traveling exhibit development project involving members of NESCC as well as the 31-member North Carolina Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative. The key concept of the exhibit is how regional iconic "harbingers" are related to climate change - for example, the impacts of a changing climate on the maple syrup industry in New England and shifts in bird migration patterns in North Carolina. Two customizable and modularized versions of an approximately 900 square foot exhibit on local impacts of climate change are being produced for small and medium-sized venues. The project expects to serve approximately 1.5 million visitors in the two regions and is positioned as an innovative model for other regions of the country. A citizen science program will be developed by staff at TERC for those participating centers with outdoor venues. The exhibit is being designed by Jeff Kennedy Associates and MegaFun simulation software designers. NESCC is also developing a project Web site. Goodman Research Associates is conducting both formative and summative evaluation processes on visitor learning and on the project's collaborative process. The Association of Science-Technology Centers will manage the two tours.
Arizona State University (ASU) in collaboration with Arizona Science Center, Boeing, Intel, Microchip, Motorola, Salt River Project, AZ Foundation for Resource Education, AZ Game & Fish Department, US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, Mesa Public Schools, and Boys & Girls Clubs of the East Valley, offer a three-year extracurricular project resulting in IT/STEM-related learning outcomes for 96 participants in grades 7, 8, and 9. The project targets and engages female and minority youth traditionally under-represented in IT/STEM fields in multi-year out-of-school technological design and problem solving experiences. These include summer internships/externships and university research in the science center and industrial settings where participants develop socially responsible solutions for challenging real world problems. The program includes cognitive apprenticeships with diverse mentors, opportunities to practice workplace skills such as leadership, teamwork, time management, creativity and reporting, and use of technological tools to gather and analyze complex data sets. Participants simulate desert tortoise behaviors, research and develop designs to mitigate the urban heat island, build small-scale renewable energy resources, design autonomous rovers capable of navigating Mars-like terrain, and develop a model habitat for humans to live on Mars. Together with their families participants gain first-hand knowledge of IT/STEM career and educational pathways. In addition to youth outcomes, the adults associated with this project are better prepared to positively influence IT/STEM learning experiences for under-represented youth. The evaluation measures participant content knowledge, attitudes and interest in IT/STEM subjects, workplace skills and intentions to pursue IT/STEM educational and career pathways to understand participant reactions, learning, transfer and results. Informal curricula developed through this project, field-tested with youth at Boys & Girls Clubs and youth at Arizona Science Center will be available on the project website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tirupalavanam GaneshMonica ElserStephen KrauseDale BakerSharon Robinson-Kurplus
The Learning and Youth Research and Evaluation Center (LYREC) is a collaboration of the Exploratorium, Harvard University, Kings College London, SRI International and UC Santa Cruz. LYREC provides technical assistance to NSF AYS projects, collects and synthesizes their impact data, and oversees dissemination of progress and results. This center builds on the Center for Informal Learning in Schools (CILS) that has developed a theoretical approach that takes into account the particular strengths and affordances of both Out of School Teaching (OST) and school environments. This foundation will permit strengthening the potential of the NSF AYS projects to develop strong local models that can generate valid and reliable data that can guide future investment, design and research aimed at creating coherence across OST and school settings. The overarching questions for the work are: 1. How can OST programs support K-8 engagement and learning in science, and in particular how can they contribute to student engagement with K-8 school science and beyond? 2. What is the range of science learning outcomes OST programs can promote, particularly when in collaboration with schools, IHE's, businesses, and other community partners? 3. How can classroom teachers and schools build on children's OST experiences to strengthen children's participation and achievement in K-12 school science Additionally, the data analysis will reveal: 1. How OST programs may be positioned to support, in particular, high-poverty, female and/or minority children traditionally excluded from STEM academic and career paths; and 2. The structural/organizational challenges and constraints that exist to complicate or confound efforts to provide OST experiences that support school science engagement, and conversely, the new possibilities which are created by collaboration across organizational fields. Data will be gathered from surveys, interviews, focus groups, evaluation reports, and classroom and school data.
This research study involves collaboration between researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and Bowie State University, an HBCU, to examine a multi-component pre-service model for preparing minority students to teach upper elementary and middle level science. The treatment consists of (1) focused recruitment efforts by the collaborating universities; (2) a pre-service science content course emphasizing inquiry and the mathematics of data management; (3) an internship in an after school program serving minority students; (4) field placements in Prince Georges County minority-serving professional development schools; and (5) mentoring support during the induction year. The research agenda will examine each aspect of the intervention using quantitative and qualitative methods and a small number of case studies.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
James McginnisSpencer BensonScott Dantley
This Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) is a collaboration among Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California—Santa Barbara, and the Museum of Science—Boston with participation by Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), the University of Basel (Switzerland), the University of Tokyo (Japan), and the Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, and the Sandia National Laboratories. The NSEC combines "top down" and "bottom up" approaches to construct novel electronic and magnetic devices with nanoscale sizes and understand their behavior, including quantum phenomena. Through a close integration of research, education, and public outreach, the Center encourages and promotes the training of a diverse group of people to be leaders in this new interdisciplinary field.
The National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) is a Science and Technology Center focused on understanding the processes that shape the Earth's surface, and on communicating that understanding with a broad range of stakeholders. NCED's work will support a larger, community-based effort to develop a suite of quantitative models of the Earth's surface: a Community Sediment Model (CSM). Results of the NCED-CSM collaboration will be used for both short-term prediction of surface response to natural and anthropogenic change and long-term interpretation of how past conditions are recorded in landscapes and sedimentary strata. This will in turn help solve pressing societal problems such as estimation and mitigation of landscape-related risk; responsible management of landscape resources including forests, agricultural, and recreational areas; forecasting landscape response to possible climatic and other changes; and wise development of resources like groundwater and hydrocarbons that are hosted in buried sediments. NCED education and knowledge transfer programs include exhibits and educational programs at the Science Museum of Minnesota, internships and programs for students from tribal colleges and other underrepresented populations, and research opportunities for participants from outside core NCED institutions. The Earth's surface is the dynamic interface among the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. It is intimately interwoven with the life that inhabits it. Surface processes span environments ranging from high mountains to the deep ocean and time scales from fractions of a second to millions of years. Because of this range in forms, processes, and scales, the study of surface dynamics has involved many disciplines and approaches. A major goal of NCED is to foster the development of a unified, quantitative science of Earth-surface dynamics that combines efforts in geomorphology, civil engineering, biology, sedimentary geology, oceanography, and geophysics. Our research program has four major themes: (1) landscape evolution, (2) basin evolution, (3) biological sediment dynamics, and (4) integration of morphodynamic processes across environments and scales. Each theme area provides opportunities for exchange of information and ideas with a wide range of stakeholders, including teachers and learners at all levels; researchers, managers, and policy makers in both the commercial and public sectors; and the general public.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Efi Foufoula-GeorgiouChristopher PaolaGary Parker
CENTC's (Center for Enabling New Technologies Through Catalysis) outreach is focused on partnerships with science centers. Initially we worked with the Pacific Science Center (PSC) to train our students in effective communication of science concepts to public audiences. Later we developed a short-term exhibit, Chemist - Catalysts for Change in the Portal to Current Research space. As part of the CCI/AISL partnership program, we partnered with Liberty Science Center to create an activity on a multi-touch media table, "Molecule Magic." We are currently developing another exhibit with PSC.