Proposal

Program Plan

A. Project SUCCEED Philosophy and Goals

While science has changed in the last half of this century to rely more and more on computer models for understanding everything from atomic processes, to new chemicals and medicines, to the origin and structure of galaxies, to designing the next generation of materials, science education continues to lag. We want to provide students with the opportunity to observe, conjecture, explore, and discover the excitement of authentic science as our apprentices and colleagues. SUCCEED, Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery, is a coordinated supplementary education program for middle school and high school students in Durham and the surrounding Triangle Area. Primarily through computer models and scientific visualization of the processes and results of such models, students come to a better understanding of science, as they develop their own skills and interests in scientific observation, conjecture, inquiry, and discovery.

The staff scientists and educators of the Shodor Education Foundation, in coordination with parents and area scientists and educators have designed this program to enable greater student participation in our present and future funded research and education projects in computational science and the application of technology to the mathematics and science reform movements. Students interact with the technology, with each other, and with Foundation scientists and mathematicians through informal and formal research and education activities, stimulating their own interests in science and mathematics while developing their capacity for leadership, communication, and collaboration.

Research and development projects of the Shodor Foundation are currently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS). Staff scientists and educators are developing authentic science simulations and the supporting interdisciplinary curricular materials to bring modeling and simulation technologies into the mathematics and science education reform efforts. The nature of our funding is such that the direct beneficiaries of our current efforts are usually students, teachers, and scientists located far from the Triangle:

  • We are developing and supporting collaborative computational investigations for teachers and students in the Maryland Virtual High School of Science and Mathematics, an NSF-funded activity to link Maryland schools over the Internet. Examples of current projects include applying computer models to aid the study of hurricanes, the local variation of magnetic North, and bear migration.

  • Our on-going collaborations with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois reach students and teachers in the midwest and Texas through the Education Affiliates program and the Resource for Science Education project. We have new and current projects in chemistry visualization, cosmology, and materials processing.

  • Our ARPA and DoDDS projects are developing authentic science simulations for students and teachers in schools run by the Department of Defense for the children of American servicemen and civilian contractors stationed in Europe and Asia. Units under development include the formation of galaxies and fractals in mathematics and science.

  • With support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, we are developing two on-line courses in atmospheric chemistry and meterology to help understand the role of computer models and simulations.

This proposal to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund seeks the incremental support that will enable us to multiply our efforts by extending these and other projects to incorporate a significant number of North Carolina students as our collaborators and apprentice scientists. Students will work in both informal and formal settings to learn about science and mathematics, and about the expanding role of computers as tools for doing science and mathematics by actually using these new technologies in a variety of investigations and explorations. Students will collaborate with each other, with the Foundation scientists, and with other students over the Internet to experience the excitement of authentic research by becoming actual participants in that research.



B. SUCCEED Components

SUCCEED is composed of three complementary components intended to give a wide audience of motivated students the opportunity to learn science by doing science side-by-side with established researchers and educators. We have just completed a year of pilot programs for each component, involving a limited number of middle school and high school students, and we are ready to expand these opportunities with the help of the Fund:

  1. The Internet Science Club, intended primarily for middle school students and beginning high school students, as an introduction to computing and communication technologies in science;
  2. Explorations in Computational Science, a series of short workshops and extended classes designed to provide the orientation and training needed to engage in authentic scientific research in a computational context;
  3. Research Apprenticeships, in which qualified students will participate as active team members of on-going research programs at the Foundation in various areas of computational science and education.

The specific projects and activities will depend on the grade level, personal interests, demonstrated abilities, and leadership skills of the individual students. As evidenced by our students and interns over the last two years, with the competence and confidence derived from their participation, SUCCEED students become leaders and role models for their peers and for younger students in their schools and the community.

The Internet Science Club

As a venue for a series of informal science education activities, the Shodor training facilities will be transformed after school and on selected weekend days into the clubhouse of the Internet Science Club (ISC). Middle school and beginning high school students will be introduced to computing and the Internet to acquire fundamental research and investigation skills through both directed and independent-but-supervised explorations. Students will have the opportunity to explore topics of their own choosing through Internet-accessible resources, and they will learn how to evaluate the quality of information that they have retrieved. Club members will also have the chance to be Internet correspondents with students participating in Shodor education projects across the U.S. and around the world. A variety of hands-on and thinking activities will be used to stimulate growth in critical thinking skills. First and foremost, we want to help the Club members become good observers, whose observations are carefully recorded and honestly reported.

The Club will meet after school during the year and for in several-week sessions for half days during the summer. All club members, will attend a set of orientation workshops, after which time they will be allowed to use the facilities in supervised activities. Club members will work on projects individually and in small groups, and larger group discussions will help the students display what they have learned to one another. Expanding our current activities, we will schedule several parent-teacher open houses and workshops in basic computer and Internet skills, for which we expect the instructors to be the ISC students themselves. While one staff member will have principal responsibility for directing the Club, Shodor scientists and colleagues will rotate in making brief presentations on various areas of science and mathematics and research. Upper level high school students who have participated in other phases of SUCCEED will also serve as mentors and advisors. Field trips will be arranged to area laboratories, research facilities, and technology sites.

In order to help students appreciate the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of science and mathematics, some Club activities will be organized around topical themes of interest to Club members. Possible themes include energy, the environment, transportation, space science, and medicine. We expect that about 200 students will participate in one or more Club activities over the three-year project.

Explorations in Computational Science

Project SUCCEED will offer formal workshops and classes in the theory and practice of computational science, going deeper than the introductory activities of the ISC, both as stand-alone classes for some students and as a prelude to full research apprenticeships. By computational science we mean that aspect of any science in which the computation plays an essential role. With support from the Fund, we will develop and offer a range of content-rich workshops and classes that will introduce area students to research methodologies, mathematical modeling, scientific computing, data visualization, and programming. Students will learn to make the appropriate match of application, algorithm, and architecture which is at the heart of computational science. While some short workshops (typically one or two sessions of a few hours duration) will focus on the foundational skills of a computational scientist, the longer classes (10 - 20 sessions of a few hours each) will be built around topical areas such as computational chemistry, physics, biology, or mathematics. One such topical class will be offered each semester and summer.

Classes will be a blend of lecture, directed laboratory exercises that enable the students to learn in a hands-on environment, and independent work. Wherever possible, examples for the classes will be drawn from the current research projects of the Foundation scientists and collaborators as a way of whetting the appetite for full research apprenticeships. Workshops and classes will be given more than once and will rotate throughout the year and for the three years of SUCCEED. Enrollment will be limited to twenty students per class; we expect that some students will take more than one class over the project lifetime, so that approximately 100 different students over three years will participate.

Research Apprenticeships

The capstone activity of SUCCEED for most students will be the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the IEC or their Exploration classes by undertaking either directed or independent research projects as apprentices to one of the Shodor Foundation scientists or mathematicians. The mentor-apprentice model of education and professional development characterizes and is the reason for the success of American higher education. Students from all over the world seek the opportunity to work with and not merely work for active researchers at the leading edges of knowledge. Our experience is that this model also works very well at the pre-college level. Candidates for research apprenticeships will be successful graduates of one or more Exploration classes, or other high school aged students who demonstrate the requisite skills and knowledge. For program management purposes, apprenticeships generally will last for an entire semester or half of a summer. Students demonstrating exceptional performance or growth will be invited to apply to renew their apprenticeships for an extended period of time.

In consultation with the mentoring scientist, the apprentice can choose to work on one of the current Shodor research projects or propose a complementary project that will enhance or extend our work. We expect apprentices to work no less than three hours nor more than 10 hours per week during the school year for up to 20 weeks, with 100 total hours constituting the magnitude of a typical project. As with all SUCCEED activities, the research apprenticeship is expected to be supplementary to the students' own school work, so that the actual amount of time per week will be determined in consultation with the students, their mentors, parents, and teachers, so as not to take away from on-going school or outside work obligations. Research apprentices not working for credit will receive a competitive wage to permit the participation of students who might otherwise need to undertake part time work to earn money for college. Students will meet several times over the course of the apprenticeship with both the mentor and the project director for both formative and summative evaluation of their work so as to help the students assess their own progress and direction.

These apprenticeship projects should generate opportunities for younger or less experienced members of the ISC to help out, learn from, and work with the apprentices, perhaps applying their Internet research skills to new problems. In this way, the high school students themselves will have the chance to mentor younger fledgling scientists and to continue the SUCCEED learning cycle. They will also gain first-hand the knowledge that they learn best that which they are called upon to teach. We expect 10 students each year to undertake a full research apprenticeship.

C. Recruiting Plan:

SUCCEED participation will be open to middle and high school students in any North Carolina public, private, or home school. Based on the success from our pilot programs, we expect no shortage of qualified applicants. In our current programs, we have identified several key student populations that SUCCEED will bring together:

  • We have a special working relationship with the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and will work to ensure that these students are encouraged to take advantage of SUCCEED opportunities. In the past year, we have had six students from NCSSM participate in our intern program or chemistry seminar.
  • Durham Public Schools, and in particular, students from "Walltown" and East Durham. We are especially proud of our success in getting students from DPS to focus on science and computer-related activities. We have strong links to several schools in our community, and a good working relationship with the DPS administration.
  • The home school community has a particular need for authetic science and mathematics opportunities for their children. For example, an eight-week introductory course in scientific observation offered in spring of 1996 as part of our SUCCEED pilot efforts drew 17 middle school students with only word-of-mouth advertizing.

We want to draw on all of these contacts as we recruit for the expanded SUCCEED program. An exciting, unintended result of our pilot programs in 1996 was the opportunity to see that students from very different socio-economic and education backgrounds work so well together when teamed in an authentic research environment.

A flyer describing the project will be prepared and sent to area schools and to the Department of Public Instruction to be included on their annual listing of opportunities for students. We will also announce the project through various North Carolina home school association newsletters. Periodic newsletters published by the students of the IEC as a club activity will be sent on a regular basis to these same individuals and organizations as a way of promoting the SUCCEED project in particular and computational science education in general. In addition, descriptions of the program will be distributed to a variety of electronic mail listservs and Internet discussion group and will be featured on its own Web page at the Foundation.

The typical SUCCEED participants will be self-motivated students of above average ability who are ready to be challenged to apply themselves, to improve in their school work, and to accept the responsibilities of working in a collaborative, technology-rich environment. Student participants in each component of SUCCEED will be selected based on written applications, school transcripts, and letters of recommendation by teachers, relatives, or coaches. Before final acceptance, we will conduct interviews with the prospective SUCCEED students and their parents or guardians to ensure that all parties understand the purposes and expectations of the program and participants.

D. Matching SSEP Guidelines with SUCCEED Plans

Project SUCCEED was designed to be in full compliance with the NCTM (mathematics) and NES (science) guidelines of the national education reform movements, so it should be no surprise that we have achieved an exceptionally complete implementation of the Student Science Enrichment Program guidelines. Except where noted, the following points refer to all three components of SUCCEED:

  • GUIDELINE: Provide the opportunity to expand their knowledge and competence in science.
    SUCCEED: Computer models of physical and biological processes allow observations and conjecture that might otherwise be impossible to explore. No area of science today is practiced without a computational component, yet the word "computer" does not even appear in the index of the middle school science text used in North Carolina, and few high school students use computers for more than word processing. SUCCEED expands knowledge and competence in science by exposing students to an authentic environment in which computation, theory, and experiment complement each other to build a quantitative model. Students have the opportunity to grow in their understanding of computers and modeling as scientific tools by learning and working side-by-side with outstanding computational scientists and educators.

  • GUIDELINE: Provide the environment to "do" science in creative, engaging ways.
    SUCCEED: Computational science and scientific visualization allow us to solve complex numerical models and view the results interactively. For example, learning about galaxies in SUCCEED would be accomplished, not by reading about a galaxy in a textbook or viewing a static image, but by building and solving authentic N-body gravitationally driven simulations allowing explorations of the interaction of size, shape, distribution, rotation and instabilities in the formation of cosmological structures. Similar investigations for SUCCEED students are underway in fractals, molecular modeling, oscillating systems, environmental studies, and materials science.

  • GUIDELINE: Offer insights into and appreciation of the investigative process.
    SUCCEED: We believe that the fundamental and under appreciated components of scientific research are observation and conjecture Computational science, especially when coupled with scientific visualization, allows students to make observations and conjectures about basic processes that are difficult, if not impossible, in any other setting. Students also gain a greater appreciation for interdisciplinary work.

  • GUIDELINE: Provide career information and introduce career prospects.
    SUCCEED: A survey of professional publications speaks to the increasing opportunities for qualified computational scientists. While computational science itself has been recognized by several universities as an area of specialization, our approach will promote an understanding of the issues and procedures involved in solving computational problems in any branch of science, helping students prepare for the interdisciplinary workplace and laboratory.

  • GUIDELINE: Evaluate participants' progress.
    SUCCEED: Students will learn to develop and maintain hypertextual representations of their progress so that they, their peers, and their parents and teachers will have a network-accessible way to monitor and assess their progress. This assessment is authentic in that it uses the tools of computational science and collaboration as the medium for its own assessment.

  • GUIDELINE: Provide follow-up opportunities to link students to ongoing science programs.
    SUCCEED: The very nature of the SUCCEED program links students to our ongoing science and research efforts from the start. In addition, students will be encouraged, through their local middle or high schools or home school associations, to submit their projects for programs such as local science fairs and national programs.

  • GUIDELINE: Provide interaction with scientists.
    SUCCEED: This interaction is the raison d'tre and day-to-day mode of operation of SUCCEED. Besides the staff scientists at the Foundation, students interact with a number of visiting scientists and collaborators, both in person and over the Internet.

  • GUIDELINE: Provide the opportunity to explain their knowledge of science to others.
    SUCCEED: Frequent group meetings and discussions are integral to the scientific research process, and as active participants in our research programs, the students will participate in these meetings to update each other on their parts of the project. In addition, students will make final presentations of their personal work to other participants, parents, and teachers, while maintaining a Web-accessible version of their projects in the Shodor Science Repository.

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