A five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation awards fellowships to doctoral students who work closely and creatively with teachers and students in economically disadvantaged communities in New York City and in the Dominican Republic.

 

The grant, part of NSF’s Graduate Teaching Fellows in K–12 Education program, was awarded in 2008 to CERC, which promotes environmental leadership through education, training and research; Lamont; and three departments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences—chemistry; earth and environmental sciences; and ecology, evolution and environmental biology. The grant funds the program Learning Through Ecology and Environmental Field Studies, which supports the development and training of advanced graduate students and the critical skill of communicating science to lay audiences.

 

Nine Columbia graduate students helped devise and implement innovative ways to teach science. A doctoral student in chemistry, Jeffrey Lancaster has been working with the Peter Rouget Middle School 88 in Brooklyn. Lancaster, who studied sculpture as an undergraduate, meets each week with a class of 30 students to discuss the fundamentals of science and encourage them to apply scientific knowledge to real-world problems.

 

“I try to teach them in a way that gets them excited about things they don’t normally think about, like volcanoes, earthquakes, and minerals,” said Lancaster. “I think they now realize that everything around them is about science. Through this partnership, the students are exposed to science in a different way, and they’re opening up to what science is and what it can be and how it can help explain the world around them.”

 

As fellows, the graduate students get their tuition covered and receive a stipend to support their own academic research as well as their work with seven New York City middle and high schools in Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan. Among them are: the Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, the Rouget school and its sister school, the Punta Cana International School in the Dominican Republic, and the Dual Language School on the Upper West Side.

 

“There is a profound gap in performance in science and math between students from poor and middle class families,” said Robert Newton, a geochemistry research scientist at Lamont and the program’s principle investigator. “And it is a real barrier to getting better jobs, having more rewarding careers and to participating as educated citizens in our society. I believe that everyone at Lamont-Doherty believes that this is a critical social issue to address.”

 

CERC has been working with middle schools since 2005 to bolster curriculum development and student engagement in the sciences. And for the past four years, New York City high school teachers and students have worked as interns for Lamont scientists on research projects, the biggest of which includes hands-on fieldwork in the Pierpont marshes along the Hudson River.

 

Nancy Degnan, executive director of CERC, believes that science education and training in middle schools should involve a holistic approach—one that considers all stakeholders, from principals to students. “Our partnerships are based on working with the whole curriculum and ensuring that we link science, math and project-based learning to standards and assessment,” said Degnan. “Our starting point is ecology and inquiry, and our end point is enhancing student-centered learning to close the achievement gap.”