Thank you, Jackie. Those are impressive findings.

If I understand your commentary correctly, your project seeks to find students who may be motivated or “highly” motivated that are under-resourced (by this I take it you mean students that are on free or reduced lunch programs, for example) to get into specialized science schools. Have you collected data that provides evidence that your program design does attract many under-resourced youth from the low stakes introductory course into the more rigorous course? The reason I ask is because the Computer Science program that I am involved with is also funded by the NSF and we are seeking to broaden participation with underrepresented groups, including young women and ethnically diverse students; I would be very interested and appreciate the data you have collected in regards to this aspect and your thoughts about it; I think this is a great program for exposing under-resourced students that traditionally do not have these type of opportunities available to them. Thank you.

Hi Arthur,

Right, so, actually, it has been challenging in actually gathering evidence if we are getting the target audience but here is how we are documenting it. When we recruit, we go into the specific schools that have target demographics and a high percentage of students on free lunch. We then promise 3-4 spots for students from that school into the exploratory level (the intro) courses. These courses are not the pre-requisites but the ones that are meant to engage and get them through the door. We offer elective credit or community credit if that helps. We do 3-4 spots because we want kids to travel as a group, coming to a place that they are unfamiliar with. Once those youth enroll, we keep an eye on them, calling them if they miss class or something – ensuring them that somebody cares if they don’t show up.

Then, overall, we don’t want to ask for financial documents to ensure they are low-income because then we think youth would not even bother. We do ask them to tell us their home address, their ethnicity and optionally ask for household income bracket. We then take all of that data and extrapolate what the status is for the pool of students, as opposed to a single one. In NYC, underserved is many things. We have a very high population of recent immigrants especially from places like Bangledesh. According to some, they are not target audience or minority in sciences, but actually these type of youth are. Without supports, they don’t enter and complete college especially in the sciences. They have a lot of family support in the sense that the families want them to succeed and become doctors and engineers (the american dream), but don’t know how to navigate the systems. We see our role to be that support system and then convert them into loving conservation science, paleontology and earth science (all of the things those parents are not even realizing are valid and successful fields of study). I am going to look up your video and look forward to learning more about your program!

Preeti, thank you for your very thoughtful and clearly written reply. I really appreciate it! In regards to a video, I do not know if the College Board or NSF has posted posted a video on the pilot AP CSP course. But here is the link to the Web site for this course: http://goo.gl/fuPY7c and a news press release from the NSF in regards to this course: http://goo.gl/0Q3VHI.
Again, wonderful project you are conducting and hopefully it will expand!

Hi Sean,

Yes, we are encountering challenges. We can only serve 200 individuals in the courses and then out of those, only 60 can get accepted into the mentoring part of the program. This is a limitation of space and the number of scientists who can mentor. In 2012, the Pinkerton Foundation in NYC wants us to expand. We said something that nobody every says to a fundor…we said no. They were shocked and after understanding the reasons, funded the NYC Science Research Mentoring Consortium. Three years later, there are 14 other sites in NYC will programs that are following the model of the AMNH program. It is not a replication. It is a scale-up based on the guiding principles of the AMNH program. So each program has a different name, and runs a bit differently, but has the same core activities happening so that the program goals are the same. We lead the consortium and that means that we serve as a bit of a glue keeping all of the sites working together and connecting and sharing opportunities, resources and challenges. We also develop some experiences and products that all of us 15 sites can benefit from. This has allowed us as a whole to serve 300 youth annually as opposed to 60.Here is the website for the consortium. The website still needs a lot of work, but it is getting there. http://www.studentresearchnyc.org/

Wow, Preeti. What an impressive story. It reminds of some of the recent thinking about implementation fidelity—the importance of finding the core principles and trying to make sure those guide every adaptation, as opposed to an emphasis on replicating. Thank you.

And one more thing…how nervous were you when you said “no” to Pinkerton?

Funny question. I actually wasn’t here when that happened so I don’t know. But the Pinkerton foundation goes around telling others that we did so it all worked out I guess. But, yes, it is a risky standpoint.

Janet, thank you for these questions! Two activities we built early in early on to address the community of practice is a mandatory summer institute that brings all 60 student science researchers together and doing particular science experiences that strengthen their skills as researchers. That time is so great for them to create community. We also do some college prep stuff then, journal club and other activities that get kids talking to each other. Then once the students are broken into teams of 2-3 people and sent off to work with scientists, they meet once a month on Fridays for Advisory. These two-hour meetings bring everyone together and the curriculum is designed for them to come together and share what is happening in their research experiences, but also learn how to write science papers and create scientific posters (a requirement of the program). We have found these advisories are critical for community building.

Then, the manager of the program meets with each scientist periodically throughout the year to discuss how the students are doing and discuss any challenges.

You hit the nail on the spot when you bring up identity work. That is theoretical lens that guides our work in that – how does doing scientific research alongside a scientist in a safe, scaffolded mentoring way mediate identity development as a person who can do science and be a scientist? In essence, we are interesting in whether these students gain a realistic understanding of what it means to do science research as opposed to the glamourized view – and do they gain particular skills towards doing research and do they think they can do research.

That said – I think we do need to do a better job of getting these students to “see what is happening” for themselves. That meta-cognition happens by chance, not in a way that we program in. That would help us and them in many ways both for the moment and for their near future.