Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session R6: Engaging the Public Through a Variety of Collaborations and InitiativesInvited Undergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Geraldine Cochran, APS Room: 150ABC |
Monday, April 18, 2016 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
R6.00001: St. Albans Under the Stars: Connecting the Community to the Universe Invited Speaker: Gerceida Jones St. Albans Under the Stars (SUTS) is a community-based program organized in 2006 for the purpose of promoting fun science projects in underserved communities, and to assist in college readiness initiatives. The public outreach program has three components: 1) Solar observing with a PST telescope, 2) Engaging hands-on activities for all ages, and 3) Night observing with an 8'' Celestron telescope and a host of other amateur astronomers participating in the program with their telescopes, all aimed at different objects visible in the night sky. There is a mobile unit part that has traveled in the past to minority communities in four states; Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, {\&} Illinois using the same methods as used in New York to excite students about science. It is our aim to go national sharing astronomical knowledge while emphasizing the ancient, cultural, and inspirational value of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We believe strongly in the need for more minority involvement in science fields. Thus, we encourage higher education as part of our effort to engage members of the community, young and ``the young at heart'' to participate in various introductory aspects of the project. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
R6.00002: Rural outreach in Maine: A research-driven professional development teacher community Invited Speaker: Michael Wittmann In the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP), researchers at the University of Maine have joined together with the state's Department of Education, non-profits, and teachers in multiple school districts to create a dynamic and growing community dedicated to improving K12 education of the physical sciences. Through ongoing efforts to introduce and adapt instructional materials, guided by education research and research-guided professional development, we have built a community responsive to student and teacher needs. This work has fed back into the university setting, where teachers are playing a role in graduate courses taken by our Master of Science in Teaching students. In this talk, I will focus on the role of education research in the partnership, showing how we use research in professional development, the development of assessments, and the analysis of the resulting data. I will describe two projects, one to understand how teachers' content knowledge affects the development of items assessing knowledge of acceleration, the other to see how teachers use their content knowledge of systems and energy to make pedagogical choices based on students' incorrect ideas about conservation of energy. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
R6.00003: Changing the face of STEM: Preparing Students for Research and Outreach Invited Speaker: Emina A. Stojkovi\'c Recently, Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) grant, intended to prepare URM students for graduate programs in biomedical and/or behavioral fields. This has allowed us to bring high-caliber researchers to NEIU and engage undergraduate and graduate students in their research as well as career pathways. It has also afforded us to do something that we have found essential to attracting and supporting URM students in STEM: engaging in outreach to the community. Our scholars started to mentor elementary and high school students from neighboring communities in the city. NEIU is a public state university located in metropolitan Chicago, IL. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the most ethnically diverse university in the Midwest, NEIU embraces diversity and a nontraditional atmosphere. The funding we received has allowed our young scholars to attend research conferences in their area of expertise, present research results, and network with prestigious researchers at neighboring and far-away institutions. However, this alone is not enough to attract them to the STEM disciplines. We understand the desire of URM students to give back to their communities and they must see careers in STEM as a viable path to do so in their future. We also know the importance of offering students from the local community early exposure to science and seeing future scientists from their community talk about research. In this talk, I will share how we have used the MARC grant to prepare our students for careers in STEM and the success that we have seen thus far with our approach. [Preview Abstract] |
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