By Julie McWilliams

Amir Jones, a 10th grade student at West Philadelphia’s Sayre High School, has always had an interest in science, but partnership activities coordinated by Moelis Access Science,  a program operated by the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, helped his interests reach a whole new level.

“I used to have to go and search out information,” Jones says. “Now Moelis Access Science brings it to me.”

Through such programs, Jones and scores of other K-12 students in five West Philadelphia public schools are increasing their interest, and education, in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The promise of these endeavors form the premise of a National Science Foundation-supported white paper, “Realizing STEM Equity and Diversity through Higher Education-Community Engagement," recently prepared by Netter Center Director Ira Harkavy at Penn with Myra Burnett, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at Spelman College, and Nancy Cantor, chancellor at Rutgers University, Newark.

The paper, which is part of an international project involving the United States, China and South Africa, suggests that university-community partnerships such as MAS can help public schools educate underrepresented students in the sciences and, in turn, help to overcome a shortage of scientists that scholars say is on the horizon.

The authors write that implementing these partnerships provides a promising solution to the current challenge that could reduce inequality in STEM education throughout the world.

Harkavy and his team say institutions of higher education are vital to these inclusion efforts that will afford more women, underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities access to the world of science, which some students may have believed was previously unreachable.

“The purpose of the paper,” says Harkavy, “is to present a promising approach to advancing equity in STEM through higher education-community engagement. We need inclusion to solve this crisis -- America needs everybody -- and different perspectives will help improve science.”

Harkavy and his co-authors are not writing solely from academic research but also from experience. Penn’s Netter Center, for example, has been augmenting science classes in local public schools since receiving an NSF grant in 1999. Implemented as Access Science under the direction of Dennis DeTurck, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and professor of mathematics, the program was renamed Moelis Access Science in 2006 to acknowledge a gift from Penn alumnus Ron Moelis and his wife, Kerry, both Penn parents.

MAS supports school-day and after-school instruction in multiple ways, Joanna Chae, MAS director, explains. In one approach, Penn students enrolled in one of the University’s 12 academic-based community service STEM courses learn about a science-based community issue, such as the dangers of lead poisoning.

“The Penn students then teach the material to the K-8 or high school students, who in turn, build projects to educate the community on pressing issues such as air quality and asthma,” says Chae, who as an undergraduate at Penn took part in ABCS coursework.

Another example is Community Physics Initiative, an ABCS course taught by Larry Gladney, associate dean for natural sciences and professor of physics. In this course, which links practical and theoretical aspects of fundamental physics, Gladney’s students create and teach weekly laboratory exercises and classroom demonstrations in local high schools and thus learn science by teaching science.

MAS fellows partner with teachers to assist with planning, designing, testing and implementing labs, small group projects, discussions and investigations. Fellows facilitate hands-on activities, which “adds an additional layer of classroom instruction,” Chae says.

After-school classes are project-based, Chae says. This year, some students, including Amir Jones, prepared projects to enter into the 2015 George Washington Carver Science Fair. His project, “Gold Nanoparticles: Inert or Toxic to Biological Life,” which found the gold nanoparticles to be inert, received honorable mention in his category.

Jones has taken part in several programs operated or supported by MAS. During ninth grade, he participated in the Educational Pipeline Program, of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, operated in partnership with MAS, and the following summer was accepted into the Summer Mentorship Program operated by the Division of the Vice Provost for University Life at Penn.

Chae says, “Amir was motivated and stood out as a very committed individual. He had a lot of confidence and showed a lot of promise.”

Graduate students with well-honed skills in a particular STEM field also work with MAS. Stan Najmr, a graduate student in chemistry, is one.

Najmr says he got involved in MAS after the NSF broadened its fellowship applications to include notions of “how research affects the community at large.

“To be a good academic,” he says, “you always had to be looking for research funding. Now, if you apply for broader impact funding, you have to show involvement in the community. But what’s kept me around is all the fun.”

Najmr has taught some of the Penn undergraduates who helped Jones with his science experiment and has taught in the high school classrooms himself.

“We help them put themselves in the role of a scientist, remove the barriers and get them to thinking, ‘I’m working with a scientist. I am a scientist,’” he says. “That’s why I’m involved.”

Najmr has also taught in MAS’s Chemistry Days. In this program, Chae says scientifically talented students in under-resourced high schools are brought to the Penn campus once a month for instruction in chemistry.

But there’s more. MAS appeals to Penn students, who are passionate to share STEM activities that were meaningful to them when they were in high school. For instance, Penn students are leading an after-school club to teach students how to play and develop new math games.

MAS partners with Penn student groups to coordinate engaging after-school activities. For example, the Penn chapter of the Society of Women Engineers is working with middle school girls in an after-school program building solar cars and windmills. 

Harkavy and his co-authors acknowledge that, to support inclusion, higher education’s initiatives may need to employ new strategies to address institutional cultural issues. For instance, instructors may need new forms of research and evaluation. Instead of using only the traditional scientific method, students and faculty should also “engage in continuous active and reflective problem-solving.” They call for an approach in which "theory is integrated with practice, and the test of knowledge is the ability of human beings to improve the world."

The authors’ current paper builds on an earlier STEM white paper Harkavy wrote with Rita Axelroth Hodges, the Netter Center’s assistant director, who has worked closely with Harkavy and his co-authors throughout. The Netter Center hosted an international symposium on STEM equity and higher-education community engagement, which was followed up by a conference in South Africa, a country that, along with the U.S. and China, engaged scholars in the project. 

The conferences, as well as the white papers themselves, Hodges emphasizes, "highlight the importance of global collaboration if we are to reduce inequalities in STEM."