P4a99
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Borrowing from the language of the Old West, inner-city youth sometimes refer to their groups of friends as 'posses.' In academic circles, New York's successful Posse Foundation has given the word a new meaning: a group of inner-city high school students trained as leaders and role models, then enrolled at top colleges and universities.
This fall, a creative chemist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, will collaborate with the Posse Foundation to create posses specially designed to equip students to succeed in the sciences.
Last year, Irving R. Epstein, a chemistry professor at Brandeis University, was selected as one of 20 Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors — research scientists who are changing the way science is taught to undergraduate students. After carefully reviewing 150 applications, HHMI selected 20 professors and gave each professor $1 million to implement their innovative ideas. Epstein is using a substantial portion of that money to create science posses, taking advantage of innovations that have worked elsewhere, to increase and sustain diversity in science and higher education. In particular, he will focus on drawing in students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.
"We want to take kids who, on paper, look like they can't succeed in science, and help them to do just that," says Epstein.
Several national reports have noted the distressingly few African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the scientific workforce, despite vast efforts to entice such students to pursue science degrees. These students' absence from the sciences severely limits our country's scientific and technological potential, Epstein says. "It's not just the diversity of faces that matters, it's the diversity of ways of looking at the problem. It's important to get people who don't all think the same way."
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the scientific workforce is becoming a national crisis," he writes in a commentary published in the June, 2007, issue of Nature Chemical Biology. "Concerns for economic survival, social justice and scientific excellence all argue that we cannot afford to have a substantial segment of our population excluded from the scientific endeavor, particularly since the solutions to many of our most important problems — energy, environment, health, and water, for example — require scientific expertise and creativity."
Epstein believes he has a partial solution to the problem. To engage and retain a diverse group of students in the sciences, he is implementing innovative methods of combating the forces that typically push students away: boring classes, inadequate preparation, and lack of a science-specific support community.
The most ambitious component of his plan is modeled on the Posse program, which has helped more than 1,500 students with diverse backgrounds thrive at academically demanding colleges and universities. The honor program selects posses of 10 inner city high school seniors with academic potential and leadership abilities, prepares them with academic and life skills, and provides mentors and regular support on campus. Members of each posse learn from and support one another, and Posse Scholars, now at 26 colleges and universities across the country, including Brandeis, graduate at a better than 90 percent rate. They succeed in classrooms and often become campus leaders who reach out to other minorities and the overall community.
"For all its success, however, Posse does not produce scientists," Epstein writes in his commentary. "In a typical Brandeis posse of 10, three or four students may start out taking general chemistry, but, even in a good year, only one will complete a science major. Our experience is typical of other Posse schools."
So Epstein is blending into the Posse model features specifically designed to help students flourish in the sciences. He is working with the Posse Foundation to cultivate a network of high school science teachers that will help identify students well suited for the program. They are also developing a system of dynamic assessment to further the selection process. Another Epstein twist: a two-week summer college prep "boot camp" on campus and a paid job in a research lab from the start.
Epstein notes that for students who attend high schools with weak science programs, the intellectual demands and time commitments needed to succeed in university science courses can often exceed expectations. The boot camp is meant to bridge that gap. Through the job program, Epstein aims to increase students' support network by introducing them to the community provided by a scientific research group. A similar program worked to retain most science students from disadvantaged backgrounds in an HHMI-supported program at Harvard University, Epstein notes.
Epstein is starting small. The program will begin recruiting high school students in New York City, where the Posse Foundation's infrastructure is the strongest, in September, 2007, for a Science Posse that will start at Brandeis in the fall of 2008. "This is a sort of pilot project," Epstein explains. Two posses of students will complete their undergraduate degrees at Brandeis as part of the pilot program. "We'll develop the program, see if it works, iron out the kinks. If we're successful, the Posse Foundation is prepared to go nationwide with Science Posses."
As a complementary effort to engage all students in the excitement of science, Epstein is revamping the general chemistry class at Brandeis. The best scientists, Epstein says, are fourth graders, whose curiosity inspires them to ask questions of the natural world. And so his goal is to revive the curiosity and wonder that first lures students into science, but often fades as they are subjected to dull courses and a deluge of facts to be memorized.
"Chemistry doesn't have to be off-putting," says Epstein, whose own research focuses on glowing circles, bright spirals, and other complex patterns arising from chemical reactions that resemble those in biological systems. "By being somewhat creative in how it's taught, it's possible to draw in more underrepresented minorities and people from the population as a whole."
One strategy he has in mind is to introduce video games that help students learn chemistry. The video games are in the early planning stage at the MIT lab of Eric Klopfer, who specializes in using games as teaching aids for middle school, high school, and college level students.
Knowing that classroom demonstrations can spur the desire to learn more than diagrams and slides, Epstein is infusing his course with engaging activities. For example, he is revising his lecture on the electronic structure of atoms. Instead of showing pictures of atomic spectra, Epstein will stick electrodes in vegetables that have marinated in different solutions and run an electric current through them. The excited sodium electron in pickles glows orange as it settles back down. A zucchini soaked in a cobalt solution glows blue. A lithium solution imparts a red aura. "And you get the extra added excitement that the instructor might electrocute himself or the pickle might blow up," Epstein says.
When are the guys in the ministries of education in all the other countries going to start to think like this?
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| P4a99
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I guess all of you are happy with the education where you come from!
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| hedieh
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Interesting!!!!!!! Thanks P4a99. Where did you find this article?
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| Jackofknives
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Sure everything is more fun in video games and 3D projectors where you get to touch everything anytime you want, but its going to be incrediblely expensive and not even most if any developed country can afford it, not to mention whether the technological advancement has even reach the point where this kind of facilities are wide spread enough to the general public. I have a hitch that they are intended to mass produce this method which I disagree every step of the way. If they want to make a genius school, they wouldn’t have to make videos games and all that BS to evoke interest, just give the students lots of books and provide facilities and some guidance and let them rack their own stuff and this s what the people are doing at my university and many schools around the world to produce elite scientists.
Also note the underrepresentation of minorities are probably not because they are dispassionate about science, but more because they live in poverty and don’t even have a school in close proximity with the most basic facilities. Maybe they should work on that first, which is much less expensive and can reach a whole lot more people then giving a few people some cool gadgets.
Edited by Jackofknives on 08/23/07 - 11:19 AM
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| P4a99
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Jack, Im not asking for gadgets, labs, research centers, decent training hospitals, multimedia, huge staff back-up. No no no, hopefuly we'll dream of those things after 2-3 decades!
Im just asking for well trained teachers, doctors, professors ...
The prblem that we have over here goes some thing like this:
"a lot of high school teachers here are relatively dull and brain numb themselves. Year after year they forget what they've studied in college, and decade after decade all what they are left out with is the exact words, problems and solutions in the books they've been teaching for so long."
Do you see my point now?
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| P4a99
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Its not just me talking about the problem, have a look at this:
Rote learning:
The system is widely practiced in schools across India, Pakistan, China, Singapore, Japan, Romania and Greece (please feel free to add all the Arab countries that you happen to know of!). Some of these nations are admired for their high test scores in international comparisons with advanced nations like the United States. At the same time, progressive reforms such as Outcomes-based education which have put an emphasis on eliminating rote learning in favor of deep understanding have produced a storm of controversy of outcry as a generation of students is failing new math assessments which were aimed at increasing math performance.
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| P4a99
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Dear Arabs, i just want to add one more thing before you get too pissed off by me:
I found this on wikipedia:
"In the United Nations Arab human development report for 2004 ( 2004 ! not 200 year ago! ) the (Arab) researchers claim that rote learning is a major contributing factor to the lack of progress in science and research & development in the Arab countries. Asian nations, though scoring well on skill tests, are also studying standards of nations such as the United States to increase innovation and creativity. Studies of math skill advantages of Asian students show them to excel in basic skills, but not in complex problem solving not easily solved with standard methods."
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| Jackofknives
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guess its a cultural thing
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| P4a99
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Why would you say that when you already said this:
"Also note the underrepresentation of minorities are probably NOT because they are dispassionate about science, but more because they live in poverty and don’t even have a school in close proximity with the most basic facilities ( the "basic facilities" you are talking about is something real big ove there )".
That is sure a big part of the problem.
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| Jackofknives
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a certain level of curiosity is universal to mankind I suppose, but ways of behaving and thinking is more cultural based. This s my assumption and through the experience of the countries iv lived
Edited by Jackofknives on 08/23/07 - 02:51 PM
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| yoga
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i didnt get the rote learning thing
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| P4a99
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Rote learning:
is a learning technique which avoids understanding the inner complexities and inferences of the subject that is being learned and instead focuses on memorizing the material so that it can be recalled by the learner exactly the way it was read or heard. ($#$%% & %$^%#% & %%$# , this is exactly what the medical schools over here are based on, memorize the %$#@ 300 pages and on the exam theyll ask you to write down 20 of them!)
The major practice involved in rote learning techniques is learning by repetition, based on the idea that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more they repeat it rather than reasoning (who needs reasoning anyway?!!!! now we know why we meet so many retarded guys!).
Rote learning:
is sometimes disparaged with the derogative terms parrot fashion, regurgitation, cramming, or mugging because one who engages in rote learning may give the wrong impression of having understood what they have written or said (but they actually dont know ^$$$#@!). It is strongly discouraged by many new curriculum standards.
Does any of that sound familiar yoga?
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| yoga
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praying4a99 wrote:
Rote learning:
is a learning technique which avoids understanding the inner complexities and inferences of the subject that is being learned and instead focuses on memorizing the material so that it can be recalled by the learner exactly the way it was read or heard. ($#$%% & %$^%#% & %%$# , this is exactly what the medical schools over here are based on, memorize the %$#@ 300 pages and on the exam theyll ask you to write down 20 of them!)
where do u mean??
regarding medschool no thankfully it is not the curiculum ,,,may b in high school yes definitely it is but in medschool it is not the case
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| P4a99
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It doesnt matter where ... please guys dont let me feel that it is only like this over here ... now i feel like all of you 30,000 members study at HARVARD!
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| Jackofknives
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no just stuyding in a different country, here we put a lot of emphasis on understanding and overview, details are not as important to get high marks
im sorry ur school is teaching this way
Edited by Jackofknives on 08/25/07 - 12:28 AM
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| hedieh
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 P4a99. I liked the article, I always felt bad when I had to memorize something without any practical use.
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| yoga
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check my signature!!
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| Amro
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praying4a99 wrote:
When are the guys in the ministries of education in all the other countries going to start to think like this?
when they have the high intellectual function of thinking.
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| Sayulita
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mmmmmmmmmmm
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| P4a99
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Amro wrote:
when they have the high intellectual function of thinking.
Or when they stop thinking of their pockets and start thinking of public interests, needs and demands.
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