Past Stories
STEM Helps Research Take Root For Young Scientists
Photo: Nancy Palmieri
Flooding into the UMass Amherst Campus Center Auditorium one morning recently, hundreds of “Scientists in the Making” rushed to stand proudly by colorful, hand-crafted displays boasting vibrant titles like “Deadly Grass!” and “Poison Lettuce!”
Actually, these area middle-school students were showing off the results of a year-long research program organized by UMass Amherst’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Institute. STEM is a UMass Amherst Outreach unit aimed at connecting public school teachers and students with university faculty and graduate students. Entitled “Science and Scientists in the Making,” the STEM Connections Science Conference is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Inside, the auditorium was abuzz with students chatting about all things scientific, from how to formulate a hypothesis to how to document the hazards of elements like arsenic in our environment. Debunking the myth that science can’t be fun AND functional is the main priority of the conference organizers.
“Our first exercise [with the students] is to have them draw a picture of what they think a scientist looks like, and it always ends up being a white middle aged man in a lab coat, with glasses and crazy hair,” chuckled Stephen Schneider, Faculty Advisor of STEM Connections and Professor of Astronomy at UMass Amherst.
“We want to try to get rid of those stereotypes and show them that a scientist can have any face, even theirs.”
Apparently, STEM has done just that. “I never knew science could be so cool,” claimed Felicishia Holmes of Uma Palreddy’s eighth grade class at the Chestnut Accelerated Middle School in Springfield, one of the 11 middle schools represented at the conference.
Holmes, who declares her favorite subjects in school are science and math, has presented her poster at both regional and national science fairs. Although she has not received any awards, she claims that the opportunity STEM Connections has given her means more than a trophy.
“It gets kids motivated; especially when you know people are there that believe in you,” says Holmes.
Photo: Nancy Palmieri
Teachers say they don’t typically hear seventh and eighth graders discussing things like arsenic and watershed pollutants, especially not with traces of excitement and wonder evident in these young voices. Too often, this is exactly the age when a fascination for the sciences is lost, especially in girls and children from low-income families.
STEM helps stimulate an interest in science in students who might otherwise be left behind. In 2000, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students scored lower at each grade level in science than did their white and Asian/Pacific Islander counterparts, according to data provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
“STEM Connections gives these kids the opportunity to do real science,” says Kathleen Davis, co-Principal Investigator of the project and Associate Professor of Science Education at the UMass Amherst School of Education. “It’s not that they’re not motivated, it’s that they’ve been abandoned and X-ed out by everyone else.”
“These kids here are just regular everyday kids that are smart, they just need the chance, especially the chance to do some real science, and I’m determined to find a way to give them that chance,” she said.
Laurin Sievert, a STEM Connections Fellow and a graduate student of geosciences at UMass Amherst, says she applied to become a Fellow because of an awareness of the obstacles students in low-income urban public schools face in their quest for an education.
“When I took the kids to one of the classes I was teaching [at UMass] most of them said it was the first time they had ever been to a college or university,” notes Sievert.
— Emily O’Brien
