Life Sciences Outreach Funded by CRESMET

Biology Ph.D. candidates Nathan Morehouse and Jonathan Davis are in the second year of a program they started that pairs School of Life Sciences graduate students with seventh and eighth graders to do hands-on science at Phoenix Preparatory Academy in downtown Phoenix.

Last year 45 middle school students worked with eight graduate mentors in the Graduate Partners in Science Education (GPSE) project over 26 weeks on inquiry-based science projects. In April, the students presented their projects to parents and their school community.  Later that month several students took their projects to the Central Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair, sponsored by Intel.

The mentors also took the students on field trips to the Translational Genomics Institute, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and ASU Tempe campus. Papago Park was where the students did much of their field studies on Arizona flora and fauna.

Impressed that some 83 percent of the students who participated in GPSE said that they now like science, in contrast to 40 percent of non-participating students who said this, CRESMET Director Marilyn Carlson has agreed that CRESMET will provide the $23,000 salary of the project for one year.

“Not only do Nathan and Jon understand that their work is furthering an important principle of ASU in really getting involved in our society,” said Carlson, “but they also see what vital training their initiative gives future faculty for teaching, for service and for learning how to communicate scientific research to the general public.”

While GPSE is confined to life sciences mentors for now, Morehouse and Davis think there is promise in expanding the mentoring model to other academic departments. They also would like to keep working with their students as they enter high school and look toward college.

For more information: http://lifesciences.asu.edu/gpse/