This project is designed to interest young minority women in future careers in science by providing them with an enrichment of skills, incentives, and role models upon which to base their career choices. Twenty-four female high school students in grades 9 or 10 and 6 high school science teachers will be selected to participate in a 10 day summer training program to prepare them to work on software teams composed of 4 students and one teacher advisor. The teams will produce high quality science education software during the school year following the summer session. The 6 team will be chosen from the Washington, DC area. The significance of this model lies in its ability to provide a group of young minority women and their teachers the opportunity to use leading edge technology in the context of programmer teams using sound software engineering principles and to produce high quality science education software that will be evaluated by commercial software developers for possible commercial production and distribution. In addition, young minority women will be able to reflect upon their thinking and learning styles in the context of developing science education software for other learners while teachers will increase their range of professional experiences to include research data collection and reporting for a scholarly journal article.
