Summer Program

This project seeks support to host and assess the impact of the Stanford REU: Gateways to Science Careers (G2SC) program on students’ attitudes and knowledge about science and math education careers. This 3-year program provides college students with training regarding graduate school and careers pathways in STEM education research.

Activities: First, we will operate the G2SC: Stanford Summer Science and Mathematics Education Academy. During this 8-week residential program, the 15 students selected for participation will operate in cohorts of 5. Each cohort will work as research assistants in 3 existing research labs. This will involve daily research instruction from the hours of 8am to 10am, followed by 6 hours of research work in 1 of 3 research laboratories.

Dr. Na’ilah Nasir of UC Berkeley will lead one cohort of students in a research study examining minority students’ intuitive mathematics learning. Students in this cohort will engage in field-based qualitative data collection and analysis.

A second cohort of students will work in Dr. Bryan A. Brown’s research group. His group is currently involved in research that examines how the language of science instruction can be altered to enhance students’ cognition and retention. Students participating in his cohort will participate in data collection and analysis on a classroom experiment. Students will conduct interviews, and will engage in both qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Dr. Jamal Cooks, an expert literacy professor and research of Hip-Hop culture, will lead the third cohort. As a lead scholar in the G2SC project, Dr. Cooks and his research group will explore how using hip-hop as a medium for science instruction has the potential to enhance students’ learning and can positively impact students perception of their role in the science community.

Through a collaborative with the Music, Mural, & Arts project, students will engage in research exploring the use of new literacy in science. Collectively, students working in these research groups will receive hands-on training in contemporary research. Virtual Saturday School. To supplement the summer academy, we will also host 4 Virtual Saturday Schools in Hampton, VA. During these sessions Dr. Duncan will lead the team in a review of our research training and assist them in a review of urban education research.

To supplement these sessions, Dr. Brown and Dr. Nasir will be use SkypeTM technology to lead students in research and training sessions.  The students we are recruiting to participate in this academic are African-American students. This group is largely under represented in STEM educational research fields. As a result, we have partnered with Hampton University (a historically black college) to host and recruit other African-American STEM majors to participate in the Stanford REU academy.