UMass Boston, Hub Middle Schools team up to promote diversity in science education
Through its College of Education, the University of Massachusetts Boston is partnering with three local school districts to address a critical need in education: Increasing the interest and awareness of working sciences. The initiative, called Watershed-Integrated Sciences Partnership (WISP) is a collaboration between UMass Boston, Boston Public Schools, Milton Public Schools and the Dedham Public Schools, in which ten graduate students will be placed with ten teachers each year.
WISP is a part of the Boston Science Partnership (BSP) that is a joint initiative involving Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University, Northeastern University, Tufts University and UMass Boston. UMass Boston along with Boston Public Schools and Northeastern University is one the core partners of the BSP project. The initiative began in September 2004 and is funded by a five-year, $12.5 million Math Science Partnership grant from the National Science Foundation. The BSP offers several different opportunities for learning, teaching, and service to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty at UMass Boston and Northeastern University. The BSP also offers programs for Boston Public Schools students, administrators, and teachers.
The initiative is aimed at recruiting more middle school students into science careers and at creating life long connections and experiences for graduate students with K-12 education. The program’s outdoor “classroom” will be the Neponset River Watershed, which runs through all three communities and will provide the common theme to contextualize curriculum content derived from already developed science instructional systems. Using the watershed as an integrating theme, WISP will demonstrate to students that communities of diverse socio-economic backgrounds have many commonalities and natural connections.
“UMass Boston is devoted towards the cause of enhancing the quality of urban education in the U.S, and WISP is an extension of this effort,” said UMass Boston Chancellor J. Keith Motley. “Our graduate students will gain excellent educational experiences by igniting the interests within these young minds. UMass Boston has constantly laid emphasis, and is proud to establish partnerships with other institutions in the region that recognize and nurture the talents of their students.”
As part of this effort, the college of education hosted 63 middle school students (4-6th graders) on February 14, 2008 between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. The students were from Sarah Greenwood School in Dorchester, and Tucker Elementary School in Milton. Students participated in a variety of workshops ranging from the introduction to electronic circuits, to familiarizing themselves with the tools of oceanography to collect and study plankton.
The students were thrilled to see hundreds of microscopic planktons in states of constant entropy. They were given hands-on exposure to using water test kits and were able to differentiate samples of water based on their color, composition of nitrates and oxygen. Students were also engrossed learning about electronic snap circuits. UMass Boston graduate students guided the middle schoolers to use educational test kits to switch on and off light bulbs etc.
WISP is being coordinated by the Dean of the Graduate College of Education, Carol Colbeck, and Professors Robert F. Chen, Adan Colon-Carmona, Arthur Eisenkraft, Hannah Sevian and Marilyn Decker (Boston Public Schools).
“It was great to see these diverse set of aspiring children getting to see a major research university for the first time,” said Chen, principal investigator of WISP at UMass Boston. “It was an energizing experience to see the young mind’s enthusiasm, curiosity and interest in science education.” “Most of them were excited to be on campus and were even considering careers in science.”
Leading the cohort in a closing exercise, Marilyn Decker, also a principal investigator of the project and the director of science for Boston Middle Schools, asked the crowd of eager looking and restless eyes, if this was their first visit to a university. More than half nodded. When she asked how many would like to come back some day to UMass Boston, each and every single hand soared high into the air.