Science Is Fun Lights Student Curiosity

For several years, Michael McKelvy, director of ASU’s Goldwater Materials Science Laboratories, trained ASU undergraduates majoring in science to perform hands-on "science explorations” and to work the experiments with students in Phoenix area high schools.

The program still aims to get high school students interested in science. But now McKelvy has ASU graduate students training high school students to deliver the explorations in local elementary schools. It is a chain reaction of sorts, with the spark of scientific curiosity hopping from university labs to high schools to the youngest learners in the educational system.

McKelvy modified the model of the Science Is Fun program through participating in CRESMET’s Math and Science Partnership project, Project Pathways. He is a senior faculty investigator in the research project, looking closely at the impact out-of-school motivational activities can have on what students know and how they feel about science as a subject and a career.

In the first Pathways variant of Science Is Fun, this summer McKelvy and his research team used a competitive application process to select 24 high school interns who participated in a two-week training camp at ASU Tempe campus. The interns hail from high schools in Chandler, Mesa, Tempe and Tolleson.

Each intern earned a $500 stipend as they learned the science behind the experiments they were training to perform in elementary schools. The interns shattered a racquet ball frozen to sub-arctic temperatures in liquid nitrogen, created electrical episodes that mimic lightning, and explored a variety of physical properties using a strobe light.

There was also plenty of time to explore ASU. The interns investigated the MARS Exploration Project, academic programs, research facilities, student dormitories and the Galvin Playhouse.

On September 9, Science Is Fun’s first corps of high school presenters demonstrated their experiments to family and friends. Then they headed back to elementary schools where the presenters each gave three demonstrations to three groups of sixth graders.

To understand what impact the program has on both presenters and elementary students, researcher McKelvy and his graduate students Marilee Farmer and David Wright have established a research protocol that will compare a control group that does not undergo internship training to the interns themselves. They will also examine data gathered in pre- and post-demonstration assessments of the sixth grade participants. The researchers are especially interested in knowing whether the Science Is Fun experience plays a role in the high school students’ school and career choices about math and science. For more information visit www.asu.edu/clas/csss/scienceisfun