A pathway to STEM careers and college for inner-city high school students is built around the use of cutting-edge geospatial and computer modeling to investigate pressing urban ecological problems in their neighborhood. The work in a previous ITEST grant that demonstrated an increase in student self-efficacy and interest in science is expanded to integrate career discernment, college preparation, and engagement with innovative technologies. With a project team that includes a counseling psychologist, an educational researcher, a science educator, an urban ecologist, an environmental lawyer and a cross-cultural educator, the project designs an innovative program and conducts research on both the design of the program and on student career discernment. The students meet on selected Saturdays and after school during the school year. They receive a stipend to attend a three week summer program. Students remain in the program for three years working on projects of increasing sophistication in urban ecology. Parents and care givers are integrated into the program by having them engage in similar activities to understand the nature of STEM related careers. Partnerships with the College Bound program and with two industries ensure sustainability and that students understand the workplace and have access to innovative technologies.
This project focused on using issues grounded in social justice as a means for engaging youth (which became the model of our design see attached image). They also increased their emphasis on preparing students for college as they learned that for many youth, it was the first year of college that served as a significant hurdle for their continuation in STEM. To date, they have had a 100% post-secondary attendance rate with three of their students having been awarded Gates Millennium Scholar awards (majoring in a science field) and many others receiving scholarships to attend college. In this work, we have learned that the year-round (summer + Saturday) format is critical in providing youth sufficient time to engage in a complex project, to explore their career options, and to develop the belief that a STEM field is not out of reach (Blustein et al., 2012). We have also learned that many youth upon entering college often struggle during their first and second year (see next section). Together, this ITEST project resulted in 5 journal articles, 3 book chapters, 20 conference presentations, and 7 media stories. Perhaps, most relevant for the work proposed here is that the ITEST projects have enabled their project team to develop a set of STEM career development materials (Blustein et al., 2012) that will be utilized for the work proposed here. Lastly, youth in our programs have received on average $200,000 in college scholarships per year and three youth have been awarded a Gates scholarship (full scholarship to any college for a student of color majoring in STEM). In tracking the youth over time, we have found that upon entering college, nearly 75% of youth declared a STEM major (only 10-15% entering the programs were interested in STEM each year). However, after the first year in college (as of the last graduating class 2014) 50% of those students were still majoring in STEM and after two years only 40%. This percentage is significantly higher than the national average of first generation youth of color persisting through the first year of STEM in college (National Science Board, 2014), yet it is still far from our vision. Follow-up interviews revealed that the youth found that the way science was taught was not what they envisioned when they declared a STEM major (Zhang & Barnett, 2014). In fact, they found their college-level STEM courses to be very competitive with an unwelcoming "weed-out" culture (Zhang & Barnett, 2014). In total over the life of the grant we had 60 participants per year with 20-25 new participants per year. All the participants were students from low-income backgrounds and all students were youth of color. Locally, this work resulted in a $25 million development through a partnership with the Madison Park Develompent Corporation as the youth in our program had developed the expertise to use geospatial computer modeling to evaluate the economic and ecological impacts of a proposed development that Madison Park Community Development Coporation was proposing. The analysis by the youth was a key factor in the development being approved by the city. This work also resulted in one of the more detailed food desert analyses for the city of Boston. This work was presented to the director of urban agriculture of the city of Boston and has resulted in the expansion of a hydroponic education program for the city of Boston. In terms of partnerships the funding through this ITEST award allowed our project team to develop close working relationships with the cities of Louisville, Boston, and Los Angeles as the work that the youth were engaged in the urban planning project portion of this work led directly to a new air quality work which has resulted in additional partnerships with the business community (Wicked Device, Perkin-Elmger, Persica).
