Howard University's project entitled: Plant Science as STEM Education at HBCUs - Increasing Minority Engagement with STEM through a Summer Immersion Program in Plant Biotechnology, seeks to apply the study of fast evolving plant biotechnology based theories and lab experiences designed and developed by nationally recognized leading Plant Biologists. The target audiences include pre-Freshman students and middle and high school science teachers. The students will acquire exposure to cutting-edge plant biotechnology based applications that are rapidly changing the bio-farming practices around the world. In addition, the exposure will help the participating students to develop a positive attitude towards plant science based science careers. The design of the enhanced instruction will help the middle and high school science teachers to increase their content knowledge about theory and applications of plant biotechnology which in turn will potentially be communicated to their students who are yet to develop any concrete career choices. The project will produce an on-line version of the lab modules that will help upgrade the scope of the activities at other HBCU campuses. The design of the project will solidly prepare the participants to understand how people learn, how to work with real life scientists, and how to develop the formative impressions into a real life career choice.
This project started with an aim to address the downward trend in the plant science interest within the under-represented student populations. Although biological science related disciplines have seen an increase in the participation of minority students in recent years, plant science as a STEM discipline continues to experience difficulty attracting minority students. We reasoned that invigorating plant science interest in students even before they are ready to set their mind for science careers would help raise interest in plant science discipline. We offered a plant biotechnology based summer immersion project for three summers for incoming freshman students at Howard University and for DC area middle/high school science teachers. The intellectual merit of this proposal lied in its application of the targeted study of fast evolving plant biotechnology based theories and lab experiences designed and developed by nationally recognized leading Plant Biologists. As for the broader impacts, the workshop trained 38 under-represented pre-fresman students and 9 high school science teachers of schools in the DC metro area. Through the 4-weeks long workshop for three summers, the project potentially enhanced the plant biotechnology based content knowledge of the participants. The students acquired exposure to the cutting-edge plant biotechnology based ground breaking applications that are rapidly changing the bio-farming practices around the world. In addition, the exposure helped the participating students to develop a positive attitude towards plant science based science careers. All of these outcomes were measured every year by an outside Independent Project Evaluation farm. For example, the program pre and post-survey in 2013 workshop showed a significant favorable opinion towards plant biotechnology by the participants (figure attached). The project also created a dynamic website to conduct the workshop that not only facilitated the workshop training, it also has become an excellent educational resources on Plant Biotechnology for students around the world. We have populated the website with 14 different plant biotechnology based lab modules that are being accessed by more than 11,000 hits from almost all the continents (www.howardbiolab.com). With the gathered experiences from these workshops, the PI is preparing to expand the scope of the workshop by creating lab modules that will be used for distance learning to other Historically Black Colleges and Universitiy campuses.
