- Roxanne Hughes
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
- Stephen Bilenky
- Videographer
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
- Kristin Roberts
- Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
MagLab Education and Outreach
NSF Awards: 1644779
2019 (see original presentation & discussion)
Informal / multi-age
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) is a National Science Foundation interdisciplinary large scale facility with more than 300 in-house staff and more than 1000 visiting scientists. Our research probes the fundamental questions about materials, energy and life. The MagLab also houses a team of experts in public outreach and science education to accomplish our mission of building the science workforce and expanding the public’s understanding of magnet science and foundational research. Every year the MagLab reaches more than 15,000 people in person and over a million through our website and social media platforms. These efforts will be presented in our video. Some highlights include our educational programs, such as our summer camps which focus on improving participating middle school youths’ science identity and our middle school mentorship which partners middle school students with scientists at the lab for a semester. We also have mentorship programs for K-12 teachers and undergraduates. These specific programs have a science education research component that focuses on changes in identity development as it relates to science during each program. In addition we have an annual Open House that reaches over 8,000 members of the general public. Our website includes interactive features and web content for all ages and audiences, including: the general public, K-12 students and parents, science enthusiasts, and policymakers.
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Roxanne Hughes
Welcome to our MagLab Education video: Innovations in Mentorship at a Large Scale Facility! The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) is an NSF interdisciplinary large scale facility that houses scientists who conduct research on materials, energy and life. An important part of the MagLab's mission is the education of students and community members of all ages. Our goal is to increase the representation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. One of the first ages where students begin to lose interest in STEM is middle school. To address this, we have established four different summer camps that connect middle school students with MagLab scientists and their research. In addition to these hands-on and relevant activities, we also conduct social science research on the camps to assess changes in students' STEM identity - sense of belonging and potential success in their STEM career if interest. We have been conducting this research for over a decade and followed some of our participants into college and beyond to learn what impacted their STEM
identity along their educational trajectories. The spark is fostered in our summer programs when they learn about the variety of fields in STEM. Let us know what you think of our programs! How can we improve our participants'
STEM identity and build on the excitement of our scientists?
Sharon Cooper
Rebecca Roberts
Wonderful work! I am curious about how you assess the STEM identities of the students and if you have a mechanism that assesse when/if they have made the transition of thinking of themselves as students to thinking of themselves as scientists. - Rebecca Roberts
Roxanne Hughes
Thanks for the question Rebecca! I am happy to share our metric which focuses on self-efficacy and identity as taken from the "Is Science for Me" instrument. I have lately been impressed with Zahra Hazari's metrics and we will probably move towards that in the. That being said, our qualitative work focuses on performance and the moments where this performance is recognized and in what ways. So educators play an important role in who is recognized and how that recognition - sense of being an expert - gets translated to peers.
Rebecca Roberts
Deb Cole
Rebecca Roberts
Could you provide a citation/link for the "Is Science for Me" instrument? I can't seem to find it on google
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Rebecca, email me and I can send you our version which is based on Aschbacher's Is science for me but has been changed. My email is hughes@magnet.fsu.edu
Kelli Paul
Above you talked about your qualitative work focusing on moments of recognition and the role that educators play in who and how recognition takes place. Is this part of this project? Do educators participate in addition to the scientists/role models? Have you examined this recognition and how it relates to the development of student identity?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Kelli!
It depends on the program. Our camp research project that I mentioned relies heavily on educators' recognition because mentors are only briefly in the space. This publication has been submitted to JRST so we are waiting for feedback. I'd be happy to discuss it offline if you want to email me: hughes@magnet.fsu.edu
Deb Cole
Roxanne - Fantastic video and what a great program that reaches such a large network of individuals. How long has this large scale project been in operation? How did you build your community base? Also, do you have any science identity findings to share or publications from your education research? Thank you for the great work!
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Deb! The MagLab has been in existence in Florida since 1994. Our education programs have been in existence since 1999 but the summer camps that are featured in this video started in 2006. We have an annual Open House event and conduct outreach in schools which has built our community base.
Feel free to email me and I can send you some of our publications: hughes@magnet.fsu.edu
Becca Schillaci
Research Associate
Great video! I'd love to know more about the mentors. Do they work at MagLab or are they, like the students, visitors during the summer camp? What kind of training do the mentors receive? Have you found anything particular within the mentor/mentee relationship that impacts students' STEM identity?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Becca! The mentors mainly come from the MagLab which is great because we have undergrads, grad students, postdocs, faculty and staff who can serve as mentors and discuss different aspects of their career paths.
We have not found anything specific to the mentor/mentee relationship and its impact on STEM identity, but it is something we are very interested in.
Monae Verbeke
Senior Research Associate
It would make an excellent and intriguing line of research! I'm also thinking that it would also be interesting to study the effects on the mentors - particularly if they are offered PD.
Kelli Paul
Hi, Roxanne! You stated that you haven't found anything specific related to the impact of the mentor/mentee relationship on identity. In what ways have you looked at it or is that something you are interested as next steps? If you have looked at it, how have you done so?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Kelli (and Monae),
We are very interested in the impact of mentors. This is part of our next steps. Four years ago I interviewed our mentors to determine why they volunteered to take part in these programs. I haven't had a chance to analyze this data yet. Last summer we collected data for social network analysis to see connections between mentors and mentees and across groups. Sadly, we have not had time to analyze this data. But it is coming!
Becca Schillaci
Cara Duncan
What a great program! How do you recruit/select the students to participate? And how do you foster long-term mentorship for interested students? This is encouraging research!
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Nikki! We advertise our summer camps in the local community. Some of our camps are a partnership with our local public television station WFSU, so they also help with our marketing. Our outreach coordinator sends materials to all elementary and middle schools in our county.
Fostering long-term mentorship is not formalized. Because we have staff dedicated to education, students can contact us and then we can help them get in touch with scientists. So there is a value to having staff who can facilitate mentoring as students progress through the educational pathways.
Chris Orban
Is this related to Paul Cottle's future physicists group?
Can you say more about the teacher programs?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Chris!
Paul's brings his group annually to the MagLab for a tour but the work presented here is not Paul's.
Our teacher program is a Research Experience for Teachers program: https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/p/1374
We have published some research on this program, if you are interested, please email me and I can send you some.
Gregory Rushton
Director, TN STEM Education Center
Hi, thanks for sharing your work with us, could you talk about your scientists' demographic diversity a bit? It seems like your video highlighted a diverse student population but a mostly white male scientist group...I'm especially interested in this role model idea, where prospective STEM majors identify with the person in the field to form their own identity...can you talk more about how you're encouraging this to happen at your facility? Thanks again!
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Gregory!
We have mentors at all stages of their careers including undergraduates to faculty and staff. So the range for our demographics is broad. For example, women represent 40% of our undergraduates, 35% of our graduate students, 16% of our faculty and 25% of our leadership. Students and faculty of color represent of our undergraduates students, 22% of our graduate students, and 9% of our leadership.
For our camps, we expand beyond our facility for role models although the majority come from the MagLab. We try to diversify the career types of role models as well (industry, government, academia). The camps are an initial introduction to a variety of STEM careers. Then our longer term programs, like the Middle School Mentorship, pair students with a mentor for a longer a period of time so that youth begin to understand what research careers are like.
For our mentors, we offer a variety of opportunities to participate in broader impacts with these longer term mentoring opportunities being one of many. I'm happy to email you our broader impact outline for staff and scientists to help them decide what comfort level they have. We also conduct an annual workshop that describes the various programs and expectations for mentors.
Jeannie Whitlock
Our program has been successful establishing partner connections with universities, but haven't attempted to use them as partners. What do you feel is the most appropriate way to approach a university with this request, and is there a certain department or group of students who are the most interested in working as mentors?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Jeannie!
Great question. For a national connection, CAISE (Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education) and and the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) both provide contact information for scientists across the nation.
For local partnerships, my advice would be to find local scientists' whose work or jobs fit best with your program and then contact them to tell them about your need for mentors. This one on one contact has worked best for me because this builds my network and then colleagues in my network tell me about student organizations or tell people to contact me because of my programs. This has been much more beneficial than contacting programs directly. Student groups tend to have a lot of turnover as students graduate whereas staff are more consistent so knowing staff members to reach out to is really important. I am happy to discuss in more detail if you want to contact me at hughes@magnet.fsu.edu
Jonathon Grooms
Hi Roxanne! I'm curious, now that these programs are well-established, have you all been able to document students' identity development over multiple years or multiple experiences with MagLab programs?
Roxanne Hughes
Hi Jonathon!!! Such a great question.
In 2014, I had a longitudinal study published which followed the SciGirls campers into college (Hughes, R. (2015). An Investigation into the Longitudinal Identity Trajectories of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 21(3), 181-213 DOI: 10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.201501303).
I am currently working with a colleague at Florida State University to contact another cohort of young women who are entering college now.
The difficulty is that we cannot say with great confidence what level of impact the MagLab programs had over time. Each student has so many different science experiences and the diversity of out of school experiences makes it difficult to quantitatively assess each program or experiences' impact. We have focused more on storied identities and gathered qualitative data on each person's STEM identity story to determine how much value they give to our programs as part of their personal STEM identity trajectory.
Jonathon Grooms
Monae Verbeke
Senior Research Associate
I'm also interested in this line of work. I wonder, have you studied the effects with any youth who have low science capital?
Roxanne Hughes
Excellent question! We are in the process of submitting a grant to reach students with lower science capital. As it stands, most of our campers have a relatively high science capital.
Tim Spuck
A great program Roxanne, looking forward to visiting the facility sometime! :-) You said in your introduction "We have been conducting this research for over a decade and followed some of our participants into college and beyond to learn what impacted their STEM identity along their educational trajectories." You may have mentioned this in Austin, but has this research been published anywhere or is it publicly available. Longitudinal studies are difficult to come by. Thanks, Tim
Roxanne Hughes
You are welcome any time Tim! I hope all is well.
Below is a list of our camp relevant publications (there are two more under review):
Hughes, R. & Molyneaux, K. (2014) Unpacking Secondary School Students’ Identity Negotiations Regarding Science and Engineering: A Case Study in the United States. International Journal of Gender, Science, and Technology, 6(3), 291-309.
Hughes, R., Nzekwe, B., & Molyneaux, K. (2013).The single sex debate for girls in science: A comparison between two informal science programs on middle school students' STEM identity formation. Research in Science Education Journal. 43(5), 1979-2007.
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.