HSTA TEAMS for Community Health: Teaching Educators and Adolescents Mentoring and Science (TEAMS) to Improve Community Health
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Project Description
The Biomedical Summer Institute at West Virginia University (WVU) for teachers, mentors, and students directed by Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) leadership and staff in collaboration with university faculty sets the foundation for the HSTA academic year community-based after school clubs during which specially trained HSTA teachers mentor students into research. Through the after-school club curriculum HSTA students will use validated resources, supported by HSTA TEAMS of mentors, to design science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEM+M) educational interventions or experiments with middle school students. The results of the STEM+M community-based research projects will be disseminated through regional and state HSTA research symposiums, as well as through national conferences and publications.
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Abstract
For 28 years the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) of the West Virginia University (WVU) Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center with the help of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA), has implemented a one-of-a-kind mentoring program designed to assist WV high-school students enter and succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and Medicine (STEM+M) based undergraduate and graduate degree programs, in which they are under-represented and underserved. HSTA submits this proposal with the novel approach of using a team-based mentoring structure to facilitate the development and execution of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and Citizen Science (CI) projects, to be carried out by HSTA students. HSTA marshals and links the efforts of an impressive network of mentors across educational levels to support 160 junior students annually (800 over a five-year period) through HSTA TEAMS. The innovation of HSTA TEAMS is in the combined use of the flexible structure of HSTA and the long arc of mentorship linkages, connecting college to community through high school, and now middle school students, in over half of WV counties across the state. It is the flexible structure of HSTA that allows the HSTA BioMed Summer Institute and HSTA community-based after-school club curriculum to respond to what is happening on the ground for HSTA families and communities, as well as with what the research community is observing and investigating. The Biomedical Summer Institute at WVU for teachers, mentors, and students directed by HSTA leadership and staff in collaboration with university faculty sets the foundation for the HSTA academic year community-based after school clubs during which specially trained HSTA teachers mentor students into research. Through the after-school club curriculum HSTA students will use validated resources, supported by HSTA TEAMS of mentors, to design STEM+M educational interventions or experiments with middle school students. The results of the STEM+M community-based research projects will be disseminated through regional and state HSTA research symposiums, as well as through national conferences and publications.
