The Notre Dame extended Research Community (NDeRC), a new GK-12 project between the University of Notre Dame and eleven K-12 school districts in Indiana and Michigan, focuses on research activities for graduate students, K-12 teachers and students. These activities that center on such areas as astronomy, physics, chemistry, computer science and engineering, are developed by graduate students and experienced teachers and are then implemented in the K-12 classroom. The research activities are connected to nationally recognized education programs such as QuarkNet (a previously funded NSF project, award # 0207072), TLRBSE and Supercomputing Education Programs. The goals of NCeRC are: 1) to incorporate graduate students into the life and work of the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center so as to instill a sense of responsibility to and provide a model for education and public outreach, 2) to provide a research experience to a wider range of K-12 teachers and students in surrounding areas, 3) to strengthen and expand avenues of collaboration between University and surrounding K-12 institutions. This project provides research experience in the sciences for those who traditionally would not have had the opportunity.
was proposed by high school physics teachers and university faculty at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center (NDQC.) The goals were to add graduate students to the community we had been building for seven years around our weekly meetings and full time summer research, and to extend our research-focused community beyond our high energy physics group into multiple disciplines throughout the Northern Indiana/Southern Michigan (Michiana) area. Intellectual Merit Over its six-year history, NDeRC funded the research of 19 graduate students, each for two years, in Physics, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Sociology. In addition, these 19 Fellows (so far 14 of whom have completed their Ph.D.s) were effectively apprenticed as education and public outreach specialists, with particular emphasis on our Integrated STEM Community model. On that model, STEM education is best understood as effective invitation into STEM community, whether on a track into specialized STEM research, into participation in its commercial and social applications, or in every case into a STEM-literate humanity to whom both responsibility for STEM research and its benefits rightfully belong. Fellows gained experience with the tools we use to invite teachers and students into the STEM community, including our Annual Collaborating for Education and Research Forum, a range of social media tools, and our Institute/STEMweek model. That I/S model draws together the STEM community by providing K-12 educators with week-long immersions into the language and practice of various areas of STEM research, and by collaborating with them to offer discipline-specific, research-centric, week-long classroom experiences for their students: our STEMweeks. This model has been extended from our pilot in genetics and developmental biology into nanotechnology, environmental science, astronomy, bacterial transformation, and particle physics. Broader Impacts Over these six years, NDeRC STEMweeks have been in 500+ different classrooms with 124 Michiana teachers and over 17,000 students in 52 different schools. Our flagship STEMweek program, BioEYES, brought hands-on genetics studies with zebrafish to some 14,500 students. A survey of 332 middle and high school girls showed the percentage who reported that science was fun increased by a third, while the number who found science frustrating or boring was cut roughly in half, after their week-long BioEYES experience. Over 97% of participating teachers report being well prepared in their Institute week for the classroom activities, and they report consistently that their Institute/STEMweek participation positively encouraged multiple best practices in other areas of their teaching. Our six annual Forums brought together 360 unique K-12 teachers to collaborate with some 30 organizations of university and other community partners; 98% of those teachers reported leaving the Forum "much more aware" of opportunities to collaborate around STEM activities in Michiana.
