A program to encourage underrepresented high school students to study STEM through hands-on University-level research experience:its impact, how we did it, and what we learned

ORAL

Abstract

Since 2007, we have offered a course that pairs small groups of ninth grade high schoolers from historically underrepresented backgrounds with graduate student researchers from STEM disciplines to complete a five week long summer research project of the graduate students' design. Our course, 'Topics in Current Research', is located at UC Berkeley and administered with the SMASH Academy, a Bay Area non-profit. In this presentation, we detail the structure of the course; discuss lessons learned in its administration; and, present findings from 10 years of data collected from the high school and graduate students showing, among other things, that after participating in the program high schoolers were more likely to feel like they belonged in STEM and more likely to consider it for a career. We hope that this program will serve as a model and motivation for other institutions to do something similar.

*This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation Particle Astrophysics/Underground Physics Program, under Grant Number PHY-1408597.

–

Presenters

  • Trevor GrandPre

    • Physics, UC Berkeley
    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

Authors

  • Trevor GrandPre

    • Physics, UC Berkeley
    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Miguel Daal

    • Physics, UC Santa Barbara

  • Kayleigh A Cassella

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Da An

    • University of California, Berkeley
    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Danielle H Speller

    • Physics, Yale University

  • Bernard Sadoulet

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Rachel Winheld

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Matthew Chow

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Frank Wang

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Alvaro A Loya Villalpando

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley

  • Arran TJ Phipps

    • Stanford University
    • Physics, Stanford University

  • Tammie Visintainer

    • Science Education, Graduate Division, University of California, Berkeley