Over the last ten years, local under-served and impoverished school systems have increasingly felt the burden of lack of funding and very limited resources in science education. The School District of Philadelphia, our city?s schools, currently has tremendous budget cuts that directly result in under-resourced science classrooms. In addition, attracting the next generation into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers is a fundamental issue facing today?s educators. It is because of these barriers throughout a student?s educational career that the outreach core will build a biological science pipeline for local, under-served high school youth to gain the research skills to be successful in other rigorous science programs, college courses, and the workforce. Our outreach core will include the continuation of two successful outreach projects funded by the P50-HD06817 grant - Project BioEYES, the week-long biology experiment which occurs in classrooms during the school day with the addition of epigenetic presentations, and the Penn Academy for Reproductive Sciences (PARS), the Saturday program at UPenn. In addition, we will expand the outreach core to include a formalized 8-week summer internship for PARS alumnae in co-Investigators? laboratories. The result of our outreach core is a series of science exposures that first target city biology classrooms and then offer specialized opportunities for high school women who have a genuine interest in science and research.
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