UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM
Grant: $149,894 - National Institutes of Health - Sep. 7, 2009
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Award Description: Under SEPA funding, we created a very effective school year experience for about 3,000 Birmingham area middle school students each year. Our programs are reaching underserved populations because most (98%) of the students in the Birmingham City School system are minority students with a high percentage from families living below the national poverty level. We have also trained about 40 middle school and high school teachers through summer BioTeach professional development experiences. 50 UAB science students have trained to facilitate the school year experiences, which include HandsOn (in area classrooms) and LabWorks (at McWane Science Center). These training and facilitation experiences prepare the teachers and undergraduates effectively to deliver inquiry-based education and to be advocates for excellence in K-12 science education throughout their careers. The requested funds will greatly expand our ability to promote high level, inquiry-based science education in the target group of students, expand the opportunity to educate the students and their parents in the mission of NIH and NCRR to improve the nation¿s health, and create modules that can be scaled up for dissemination to schools around the nation. We will impact the students¿ parents through take-home lessons that the students teach to their parents. The proposed program will create 1 full time position and 4 part time student jobs. Specifically, the program will fund 4 undergraduate UAB Science and Technology Honors students to facilitate the HandsOn and LabWorks experiences that are currently being conducted in 2009 and 2010. In addition, a new position will be created for an Associate Director for the Hands-On program. This has been a very successful program, but we have more requests than we can fulfill with the current staffing. Further, this program is training teachers to be able to conduct these experiments in the future with minimal external support, thus creating sustainability.
Project Description: Under SEPA funding, we created a very effective school year experience for about 3,000 Birmingham area middle school students each year. Our programs are reaching underserved populations because most (98%) of the students in the Birmingham City School system are minority students with a high percentage from families living below the national poverty level. We have also trained about 40 middle school and high school teachers through summer BioTeach professional development experiences. 50 UAB science students have trained to facilitate the school year experiences, which include HandsOn (in area classrooms) and LabWorks (at McWane Science Center). These training and facilitation experiences prepare the teachers and undergraduates effectively to deliver inquiry-based education and to be advocates for excellence in K-12 science education throughout their careers. The requested funds will greatly expand our ability to promote high level, inquiry-based science education in the target group of students, expand the opportunity to educate the students and their parents in the mission of NIH and NCRR to improve the nation¿s health, and create modules that can be scaled up for dissemination to schools around the nation. We will impact the students¿ parents through take-home lessons that the students teach to their parents. The proposed program will create 1 full time position and 4 part time student jobs. Specifically, the program will fund 4 undergraduate UAB Science and Technology Honors students to facilitate the HandsOn and LabWorks experiences that are currently being conducted in 2009 and 2010. In addition, a new position will be created for an Associate Director for the Hands-On program. This has been a very successful program, but we have more requests than we can fulfill with the current staffing. Further, this program is training teachers to be able to conduct these experiments in the future with minimal external support, thus creating sustainability.
Jobs Summary: Job not started (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Not Started
This award's data was last updated on Sep. 7, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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