Fostering Pre-Collegiate Science Education Through the PEOPLE Program(Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence)

Chris Moore & Dan Wallace, SRC, DMR-0084402

When compared with their majority counterparts, the percentage of students of color and those who are first-generation students enrolled in college are low. Several studies have demonstrated that enrollment and graduation rates can be increased by pre-college programs that a) encourage students to aspire to opportunities available through higher education, and b) assist students in developing critical academic skills.

A solution developed by the University of Wisconsin – Madison has been the PEOPLE program, which seeks to support and encourage minority middle school and high school students from Wisconsin in order to prepare them for future success as undergraduates. Upon successful completion of the PEOPLE program and admission to the university, PEOPLE students are eligible for full tuition remission during their tenure as an undergraduate at UW-Madison.

During Summer 2005, Chris Moore and Dan Wallace of the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) gave a summer course as part of the PEOPLE program titled “Light as a Research Tool.” The goal was to expose students to the use of light in research and to prepare them for their future study of physics.

Students use lasers to experiment with light diffraction.

Fostering Pre-Collegiate Science Education Through the PEOPLE Program(Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence)

Chris Moore & Dan Wallace, SRC, DMR-0084402Enjoying Hands-On Learning:Students in the PEOPLE program got to live the life of a scientist at SRC. During hands-on workdays, students partnered with working scientists and researchers to learn about the work they do, the tools they use, and how SRC enables their work. In some cases students were able to take real-time data using actual samples. At right a student working with an SRC researcher analyzes brain tissue using an infrared microscope as part of a project seeking to better understand the biology of Alzheimer’s Disease..

Presenting Posters and Peer-Feedback:There is perhaps no more quintessential part of a scientist’s life than peer review. As part of the PEOPLE program, students were divided into groups of sub-specialists and were charged with analyzing their data, summarizing it on a poster, and presenting it at a poster session at the end of the program

Taking and Analyzing Data Using SPECTRA:SRC has developed a unique and powerful learning tool with an educational outreach beamline and a remote Web-based program that allows for real-time data collection. The program, called SPECTRA (Students Performing Experiments Collaboratively Through Remote Access), was visited in person by the PEOPLE students, who then accessed the beamline remotely to take data and analyze it using notebook computers in their classroom on the UW Madison campus.

Learning the Principles of Light:To understand how a synchrotron assists in research is to understand the principles of the physics of light. To assist in this introduction to light and physics, students participated in several demonstrations and activities. Utilizing this laser art activity, the principles of diffraction gratings are explained