GK-12 Fellows Program gives young scientists the chance to better SMET education
For Jeremy Fisher, a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, one of his most worthwhile learning experiences in the last year involved going back to high school.
"I had taught labs before, but this was a lot different," said Fisher, who holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a master's in computer science. For one thing, his students were all teachers themselves, .and all were eager to learn computer science concepts that would help them teach high school computer science. The Alabama teachers and Fisher were part of a program commonly called the GK-12 Fellows program, short for Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the GK-12 Fellows program places graduate students in science, math, engineering and technology (SMET) in high schools and junior high schools, where they work with both students and teachers to integrate computer-based modeling, scientific visualization, and informatics into science and mathematics education. The three-year project is led by NCSA, which places SMET graduate students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign into Illinois classrooms. The University of Alabama campuses in Huntsville and Birmingham are also part of the project, placing graduate students in Alabama schools.
Fisher was part of a group of about 60 graduate students and GK-12 program coordinators from Illinois and Alabama who gathered in Champaign, IL, over the summer to talk about their experiences during the program's first year, share successes, and plan for the future. Fisher told of his experiences at Spain Park High School, where he taught teachers the basic concepts of computer science so that they would be better prepared to teach the subject to their students.
"Most of the teachers were math teachers who had been pushed into computer science because of the emphasis on technology these days," Fisher recalled. "They had never had anyone sit down and talk to them about the concepts of computer science. They got into it without any grounding in the field."
The teachers, he said, were extremely appreciative, and look forward to working with Fisher again next year, when he hopes to teach a course in computational modeling as a tool for teaching math and science concepts.
Fisher's was one of many success stories related during the two-day meeting in Champaign. Others included the following:
- Steven Moore, a PhD candidate in molecular biology at the University of Illinois, worked with Kathleen Gabric, a biology teacher at Hinsdale Central High School near Chicago, to bring bioinformatics into the high school classroom. Throughout the year, freshman honors biology students learned to use the NCSA-developed bioinformatics tool Biology Student Workbench for DNA and protein sequencing.
- Doug Childers, a GK-12 Fellow through the University of Alabama at Birmingham, conducted mathematical modeling workshops for teachers to show them how to use modeling and visualization as teaching tools. Next year, he will teach a college credit modeling course to high school students. His goal is to help both students and teachers use modeling in the classroom.
"It is a way to really grab their attention and make math and science more meaningful," said Childers.
The primary goal of GK-12 is nothing less than reforming science and math education in junior and senior high schools, according to Principal Investigators Eric Jakobsson and Richard Braatz. Jakobsson is an NCSA senior research scientist, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology, and head of the UI bioengineering program. Braatz is an NCSA senior research scientist and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.
"We want to mentor and motivate young people to have an interest in science and math and one way to do that is to give them the very best math and science education at an early age," said Jakobsson. "We also want to show these young scientists who become our teaching fellows how important it is to be a mentor and how important K-12 education is to developing the next generation of scientists."
For more on the GK-12 program, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Divisions/eot/gk12/.
Access Online | Posted 8-27-2002
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