Education & Outreach

Education and Outreach

The education and outreach initiative addresses the problem of the loss of Mississippi's STEM talent by recruiting/retaining promising students in computational majors at Mississippi's research institutions. The approach is to expand existing and develop new program components which include partnerships between Mississippi's institutions of higher learning (2- and 4-yr research and non-research institutions) and provide secure pathways for students in computational science majors with intervention at various levels from high school to a baccalaureate degree and onto graduate school. Research is the key component used to address these challenges.

Education is a primary concern and focus of effort to the entire MS EPSCoR community. Graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in programs at member institutions use computational (biology, chemistry, engineering) research tools. Much of this research is possible through the collaborative efforts of faculty from different institutions. This creates an opportunity for all students, including under-represented minority students from all institutions to be involved in a variety of projects and to be trained by a diverse faculty. This type of crossinstitutional collaboration with faculty and students will continue and grow to include all research thrusts, related areas, and other institutions of higher learning and other regional HBCU's.

Although all member institutions enroll a significant number of under-represented minority students, JSU, as the 4-yr research HBCU, has the most experience and success recruiting and retaining minority students in the sciences. Collaborative efforts and lessons learned will be extremely valuable to the pursuit and success of any education/outreach endeavor.

Education and outreach efforts include curricula additions and enhancements noted in the research area reports. Other components include the following:

Teacher/Faculty Summer Workshops

Teacher/Faculty Summer workshops

2009 Bioinformatics for High School and College Instructors Workshop

When: June 15-19, 2009
Where: Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS
Who:Participants of the workshop include grades 6-12 teachers, 2-yr and 4-yr instructors and faculty throughout Mississippi. Participants from any of the sciences, math, and/or technology areas will benefit.

Contributors to the workshop include research and education faculty from institutions of the Mississippi Research Consortium (JSU, MSU, UM, USM).

CEU and Graduate Credit Handler

Dr. Sherry Herron
University of Southern Mississippi
sherry.herron@usm.edu
(601)226-4739

Definitions:

Bioinformatics: Research, development, or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral or health data, including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze, or visualize such data.

Computational Biology: The development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.

Classroom demonstrations

Robert Hester, University of Mississippi Medical Center, has a computational modeling demonstration that he uses in the high school classrooms and is training faculty/instructors/students on the use of the demo. This medically relevant computational modeling demo will continue to be presented in high school and undergraduate intro classes throughout the spring semester. Dr. Hester conducted a training session for faculty at Mississippi State University January 2007.

Degree/Certificate Program Plan Development

All institutions and research thrusts involved in EPSCoR have worked to identify courses that could be used toward a degree or certificate program in one of the computational science fields. All institutions are willing to share and trade-off courses in order to identify pathways through and facilitate undergraduate success in computational science programs. A table of courses and equivalencies has been created, conversation is ongoing, and time will be set aside at the Annual State EPSCoR Conference to formalize a strategic plan for pursuing Computational Science programs across institutions.

NSF Day at Mississippi State University

Mississippi State University hosted NSF Day at Mississippi State January 11, 2007. Invitations were sent to faculty and administrators at all Mississippi four-year institutions. Program directors from six directorates made presentations to the 320 participants in the program.

A Fastlane workshop was conducted on January 10, 2007 for principal investigators and research staff. The two sessions were filled completely.

Education and Outreach Strategies and Activities

Education and outreach activities contributing to increased participation of underrepresented populations in the computational sciences include:

Research/Career Awareness Workshops

Mississippi Educational Programming will enable a single workshop agenda to be implemented at each participating university. Recruitment for the workshop will target schools with a large percentage of teachers/students from underrepresented populations in the sciences located close to the hosting university. On average, 37% of Mississippi high-school enrollment is African American and an even higher percentage is female. Participating teachers and guidance counselors will leave the workshops with products ready for the classroom (e.g. lesson plans and resources).

Teacher workshop logistics will be the responsibility of the hosting institution. The education and outreach team will work closely with research thrust scientists to design and implement the workshop agenda. Evaluation for the workshops will be conducted through a survey designed in cooperation with the evaluation team.

Computational Science Module Design and Implementation

Computational Science Modules will be developed to use during the Research/Career Awareness workshops. The education and outreach coordinator at the University of Southern Mississippi will be responsible for organizing the module development and will enlist the help of thrust researchers to develop the modules. The modules will be introduced during the Research/Career Awareness workshops.

Computational Science Scholarships

A Computational Scholarship will be awarded to entering freshman at each participating institution during years 2 and 3 of the 3-year initiative. Recipients of the scholarship will receive $1000/per academic year and an opportunity to participate in a research learning community. Criteria for this scholarship include the following:

  1. Must remain in a computational science-related field
  2. Work as an undergraduate research assistant throughout the academic year with researcher in a computational-science field
  3. Assist with the development of learning modules and/or lead high school laboratory demonstrations
  4. Maintain a GPA of 3.0 or better

Underrepresented populations will be targeted for each scholarship. Researchers within each individual thrust will be responsible for selecting the Computational Scholar and each institution will be responsible for administering the award.

High School Student/Introductory Undergraduate Course Computational Science Demonstrations

Computational scholars along with other graduate students and/or faculty will lead demonstrations on location at participating high schools and in large undergraduate introductory science courses. Participating high schools will be identified through other NSF grant contacts already established at each institution. Appropriate undergraduate courses have been identified by EPSCoR research thrust and education team members. A minimum of eight (2 visits per year per institution) demos in the high schools and eight (2 visits per year per institution) in the large introductory classes will be scheduled and completed during the life of the grant. The average enrollment of underrepresented students is 37% in MS high schools and 20-80% in introductory undergraduate science classes at MRC institutions, resulting in a significant number of students from underrepresented groups being exposed to computational science. The laboratory demonstrations will last between 1 to 1.5 hours depending on scheduling needs. Lesson plans may be shared among institutions giving graduate and undergraduate students three or more laboratory demonstrations to choose from for dissemination.

Laboratory Demonstrations will be coordinated by the Computational Scholar and/or other graduate students already in place. The coordinator will be required to identify two potential dates in order to allow for school cancellations and/or unforeseen events.

Computational Science Curricula Pathways

Researchers and MRC institution administration will identify existing and develop new computational science courses that could be used and shared among institutions and provide computational sciences course tracks for interested students. These tracks will take advantage of class offerings at each institution to make a computational science pathway more visible and available to undergraduate students across all MRC institutions.