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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2001: article | |
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Public scholarship at work in the Action Potential Science Experience By Celena E. Kusch | ||||||||
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Schools and employers throughout the United States have stressed the growing need to raise young people’s awareness and interest in science and technology. Penn State’s Action Potential Science Experience, an outreach program offered by the Eberly College of Science, strives to interest, challenge and excite K–12 students in several different areas of basic science, including chemistry, biology and forensic science. Dr. Rebecca Moore Peterson, director of the Action Potential Science Experience, explained that despite the great efforts of the nation’s teachers, many schools lack the time or resources to give students the type of science experience that demonstrates to them learning science can be hands-on and a lot of fun. “If our K–12 students aren’t coming from experiences that build strong foundations in understanding current issues in science and technology, they are almost behind when they enter college at the freshman level,” Peterson maintained. “The Action Potential Science Experience enables the K–12 students to come into a college setting and gather more information on what science is all about. They may believe that they do not want to do basic science, but perhaps they want to be involved in medicine or clinical research. When we create the Action Potential curriculum, we also keep in mind that these students may become lawyers or politicians or other non-science professionals, so we help them build a basic understanding of how modern technology is utilized in scientific research and in practice.” The Action Potential program draws from the University’s wealth of scientific resources to improve the awareness of science among young people and to enhance the educational experiences of students. Now in its second year, the Action Potential Science programs involve nearly 150 youth from Pennsylvania communities in a series of topical residence and day camps throughout the summer. Students participate in highly interactive, hands-on lab activities created by faculty scientists and administered by graduate and undergraduate student instructors and mentors from Penn State’s University Park campus. For the Penn State students, the program is a model of outreach scholarship and service learning. This year, Peterson was named one of the University’s Public Scholarship Associates for her work with science undergraduates in the Action Potential Science Experience. “There are really two aspects of the Action Potential program,” she noted. “Half of our program is outreach, since we provide an opportunity for young people to come to Penn State and have hands-on experience in science. The other half focuses on our undergraduate mentors and graduate student instructors. As they go through the process of implementing the camp activities, they are learning more about their own science, as well as learning to communicate their experience in science with lay audiences. Furthermore, the contact with these audiences really helps our students relate what they have learned in their science classes and research labs to the world around them. “In many ways, the point of the program is really to enhance undergraduate education,” she added. Through their roles as Action Potential mentors and instructors, Penn State graduate and undergraduate students develop their professional skills by crafting lesson plans and interactive science activities for summer learning camps and additional service programs in diverse community settings throughout Pennsylvania. In addition, the faculty designing and implementing the curriculum learn more about the impact of their activities from the undergraduate students’ perspectives. “The faculty learn how some of what is created for our outreach efforts can be modified for the introductory science courses. Therefore, this close interaction between Penn State faculty and students has introduced an additional benefit by improving our undergraduate education programs, as well,” she said. As one of the University’s Public Scholarship Associates, Peterson has received a Course Development and Enhancement Grant from the Office of Undergraduate Education and Outreach and Cooperative Extension. She will use the funding to develop a formal service-learning course for the dozens of undergraduates who share their science scholarship during the Action Potential camps. The course will create training for the students and give them the opportunity to have experience with young people before they start mentoring in the camps. Students will work with Action Potential faculty to develop programming and curriculum based on previous years’ assessments. There are also plans to involve students in local schools through a partnership with the Chemistry Department’s Project FLASK. (See story.) “At some level, the students will do the same things the faculty member is doing to develop curriculum,” Peterson said. “This is a great opportunity for the science education majors, as well as for the science majors who may pursue graduate study and teaching careers in the future. They learn communication skills, organization, planning and leadership. Every element of scholarship is built into the course, while providing these students with the unique opportunity to act as role models for the young people who hope to follow them.” According to Peterson, the undergraduate mentors spend as much as 45 hours a week with the Action Potential students — eating with them, talking with them and teaching them about their science. She said the mentors are impressive in the way they bring their diverse experiences and backgrounds to the program and go beyond her expectations by giving participants an idea of what it is like to be an engaged and enthusiastic scientist through their example. This summer also marked the first offering of the Action Potential Teachers Program. The course Biotechnology: From Laboratory to Classroom provided 13 Pennsylvania science teachers with four days of intensive graduate-level instruction in biotechnology theory. Participants gained hands-on experience in the Instructional Laboratory in Molecular Biology at the Penn State Biotechnology Institute and learned new approaches for teaching molecular biology and biotechnology in secondary schools. Peterson and Dr. Loida Escote-Carlson, director of the Instructional Laboratory in Molecular Biology and co-director of the Penn State Master of Science in Biotechnology Program, served as lead faculty for the workshop. “Not many people know how scientists work day to day, for example, what a researcher does with genes in a laboratory setting. By educating the educators, we are able to reach out to many more young people,” Peterson commented. “We have so much respect for educators and what they do to keep their students enthusiastic for nine months out of the year. We try to complement and enhance their classroom and provide them with professional development opportunities that give them contemporary experience with scientific theories and techniques. The program really emphasizes active learning in the teacher education program. The teachers work in the labs, but they are also actively engaged in discussing how science can be translated into the classroom,” she added. In the future, Action Potential hopes to add a teacher’s workshop in chemistry and environmental science camps in biology and chemistry for students. The program also hopes to increase the numbers of undergraduate mentors and service-learning students as they continue to launch more summer programming, with the goal of eventually offering full-time summer employment for some of the Penn State students. An outreach program of the Eberly College of Science and Conferences and Institutes | |||||||
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