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Who needs fancy laboratories? USC geology, marine science, and public health master and doctoral students team up with energetic middle school students in city parks to make miniature volcanoes, electro-magnets, and solar ovens.
It's called Science Quest, an after-school science and technology program that began in 2002. A new National Science Foundation grant will expand the program this school year.
"Science Quest started at Hand Middle School in conjunction with the Fast Forward Community Technology Center with adult volunteers. We got involved with it and started recruiting our graduate students to help out," said Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a geological sciences associate professor. "The middle school students love the experiments in the parks, and they like the graduate students, too, because they're cool--they have body piercings and dyed hair.
"I tell my graduate students that if they can learn to explain a scientific concept to middle school students, they'll be able to teach anyone."
This year, USC graduate students will hold their once-per-week science clubs at Martin Luther King Jr. Park and Hampton Park. Each group of three or five middle school students will meet with their "coaches" for 10 to 12 weeks, conducting simple but fun experiments that illustrate basic science concepts.
At the end of the semester, the students help build a Web site that explains their experiments and what they learned from them. The new NSF grant paid for weather stations and other simple equipment needed for the experiments.
"We've seen many of the middle school students improve their grades and earn honors in science classes," Benitez-Nelson said. "If we can increase their excitement and help improve their grades, that's a great thing. Ultimately, programs like Science Quest can help fill the pipeline with students who are interested in science, particularly minority students."
So far, about 40 graduate students have worked with about 80 middle school students. "It's also had an impact on a lot of our graduate students," Benitez-Nelson said. "Their involvement is changing their outlook on outreach and education."
Lauren Madden is a prime example. With Benitez-Nelson as her graduate advisor, Madden began volunteering with Science Quest.
"Our lessons focused on exploring the nervous system and how it relates to the five senses," Madden said. "The excitement these children shared during taste tests and night-vision experiments was contagious. It made me remember why I decided to become a scientist."
After graduation, Madden was thrilled when a teaching position opened at Hand Middle School in 2004. She taught there for two years, "taking the students on environmental science field trips, dissecting frogs and worms, and generally making my classroom floors sticky with the products of chemical reactions."
Madden now is a science education research associate at a private research firm, making good use of her scientific research experience and tour of duty as a middle school science teacher.
8/06
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