Biosciences for Low-income Students and Teachers

Abstract

The proposed project BLIST will expand to the 11th grade the biological sciences component of Ohio State’s YSP a pre-college program for low- income African Americans Hispanics Appalachians and members of other groups underrepresented in higher education. During 1991-92 Year One of the project BLIST will develop a biomedically oriented curriculum during the school-year. During summer 1992 BLIST will implement a two-week in-service workshop for selected school science teachers and will supervise their teaching the biological sciences component to 200 pre-11th graders during a three-week summer institute on the Ohio State campus. During the 1992-93 school year Year Two of the project BLIST university faculty and teachers who attended the summer in-service will offer four Saturday morning science enrichment sessions to 200 11th graders in eight Ohio cities. During summer 1993 the in-service workshop and summer institute will be offered again but this time 400 pre-11th graders from nine Ohio cities will participate. Year Three 1993-94 will involve offering the school-year Saturday sessions to 400 11th graders in nine cities. Students in BLIST will engage in hands-on activities and will have opportunities to interact with health field professionals and researchers in their work environments. BLIST students will have college-educated mentors from their communities who have careers in the fields that interest their matched students. A parents’ organization will discuss with the students’ parents ways that they can be supportive of their children’s educational needs and aspirations. The BLIST project will take advantage of the infrastructure and statewide network of YSP which admitted 200 pre-7th graders in 1988 and has admitted 400 every year since. YSP students their parents and their teachers take part in year-round YSP activities for six years until the students graduate from high school. The BLIST project will work with the first three classs of students admitted to YSP. BLIST will bring together during its development and implementation faculty and scientists from across the Ohio State campus including the Colleges of Medicine of Pharmacy of Dentistry of Biological Sciences the School of Allied Medical Professions the Division of Speech and Hearing Science the Biotechnology Center and the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Off-campus activities will take place in collaboration with staff at the Cleveland Clinic and the Ohio Center for Science and Industry as well as other Ohio institutions and businesses state and local agencies professional organizations and educators at colleges and universities and in local school systems. The results of the project will be school science teachers with a deeper understanding of biomedical science students with a firm grounding in science and health-care professional role models curricular materials (including simple experiments) that can be transported from the institute and weekend sessions to school classrooms and a model program that can be replicated in other communities.