Dear Ekundayo, 

Thanks for the comments and thanks for the vote! 

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Brian, 

Thanks for your interest in the iSTEM Work project.  The students are taught by a team of instructors which are comprised of both college professors and teachers from area middle and high schools.  Many of the teachers that are a part of the project began collaborating with the Morehouse faculty on prior ITEST or DRK-12 projects spanning several years.   Some of the teachers that are a part of the project were also originally students in the DRK-12 program several years ago and were recruited as 11th graders from the local school districts to become STEM teachers.  The teachers and college faculty meet weekly to develop the curriculum collaboratively along with the college students who serve as near-peer mentors and TA's for the students.  

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Kauser, 

Thanks for your comments.  Your project looks fantastic. It would be interesting to see if there are any avenues for collaboration. 

take care, 

Melissa 

Absolutely. We can setup a meeting to discuss opportunities.

Dear Billy, 

Thanks for your interest and questions. 

Students enter the program in either 6th, 7th or 8th grad and participate in the program for three years.  Students are tracked over the course of the grant in terms of both their educational and future career choices.  As you probably know, NSF does not provide funding to follow participants past the end of the grant.  However, there has been some tracking done with prior participants who became Morehouse College students after graduation from high school.  

The program is conducted on Morehouse College campus which the parents report as being a positive aspect as it makes the students feel a part of the college community.  It includes a variety of components such as brining in outside speakers from various STEM careers and engaging the students in authentic STEM experiences which are both helpful in supporting their exploration of STEM learning and careers. 

take care, 

Melissa  

Dear Beatriz, 

Parents are engaged in the program in a number of ways.  For example, there are parent workshops during the 3 year experience which address a  wide variety of factors such as college credit for high school students and dealing with stress.  Parents are also invited to attend some of the field trip opportunities and are part of the audience for the annual student showcase. In addition, parents participate in focus groups as part of the program evaluation effort.  

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Andrew, 

Thanks for your interest in the program.  I do not believe that it was inspired by the Mississippi River water quality, but the students did learn about the Flint River water crisis and the environmental justice issues related to this. 

take care, 

Melissa 

Appreciate that you made connections to environmental justice issues with the Flint River!  Some of the work that my colleagues are doing at NYSCI on environmental sustainability argue often that people of all ages really don't know where their water comes from, what happens along the way on its travels from natural sources to the faucet in you home.  Getting people to think about water as system is important and wondering how, if at all, you addressed these issues.

Dear Dorothy, 

Thanks for your interest.   The students had the opportunity to go to Cascade Nature Preserve to test the water quality.  This preserve has a springhouse and was a prior water source allowing for the discussion of where water comes from that ends up in the tap.  However, I am not sure if it is currently used as a commercial or public water source. 

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Brian, 

Some of the teachers have been involved in the program for a very extended period of time, while additional teachers join the collaboration over time.  As with most projects, the challenge for sustainability is one of funding the effort rather than one of local interest.  

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for your interest in iSTEM-Work.

The original intent of choosing this age range was to interact with the students while they were in middle school since early recruitment of students is critical for the integration of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. Early recruitment has been demonstrated to have a plethora of benefits including:  prevention of early attrition from available student pools, remedial assistance while academic problems are relatively minor, increased advisement for course selection, and enhanced access to supplemental STEM opportunities, enhanced mentoring and advisement for college admissions, increased access to positive role models; and enhancement of content knowledge (Davis & Davidson, 1982; George, Neale, Van Horne, & Malcolm, 2001; Kimmel & Cano, 2001; Maton, Hrarbowski, & Schmitt, 2000;  Kardash, 2000; McNally, 2006;  Chen & Weko, 2009; Anderson & Michener, 1994; Campbell, Hombo, Shackford, & Mazzeo, 2000; Denes & Highsmith, 1998; Matyas & Malcom, 1991).   

Students enter the program in either 6th, 7th or 8th grad and participate in the program for three years.  So, some students are in the program from 6^th-8^th grade, others from 7^th-9^th grade and some from 8^th-10^th grade.  Students enter the program with a wide range of STEM competencies and the three grades are spilt into 2 groups largely based on their entering math levels.  Prior work by this team has determined that a beginning step in this process is assessing students’ strengths and challenges in order to tailor the program to levels that are academically challenging and socially appropriate for the student. Multiple research studies document a significant percentage of underrepresented and minority incoming college freshmen have not had adequate STEM preparation opportunities required to be successful in a STEM majors (Rose, 2006; Boa, Cai, Koenig, Fang, Han, Wang, Liu, Ding, Cui, Luo, Wang, Li, & Wu, 2009 and Ryder, Leach, & Driver, 1999). ISTEM-WORK was differentiated to meet the explicit needs of Black Male students.  Students work on above grade level STEM projects throughout the 3 years and so often experience various concepts in the classroom after having already been exposed to these concepts and/or having already worked with these concepts in the iSTEM-Work program.  This grade range facilitates a smooth middle school to high school transition with two-thirds of the students entering high school at some point in the program and the remaining third readied for that transition. 

take care,

Melissa 

Excellent. I was guessing you had thought this through pretty carefully. Thanks for sharing the insight! It will actually be helpful in some of my future work.

Dear Lizzy, 

iSTEM-Work is located in Atlanta, GA.  It looked like your project was in CA.  Does this mean you have branches here in GA?   All the students work on the project in small groups.  

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Neela, 

Thanks for your comments. 

take care, 

Melissa 

Dear Nastassia, 

Thanks for  your interest in the iSTEM project.  Your project looks great especially having the students develop virtual field trips for other students using the virtual reality system.  

take care, 

Melissa 

Thanks Thaddeus!

Melissa 

Thanks Abigail, 

Melissa