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Environmental education center gets city kids started down the path to science. Just a stone's throw from streets sprinkled with shattered glass, in a largely African-American west Philadelphia neighborhood, exists a convergence of labs, volunteers, educators, and most importantly, eager students. We established the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center in 1991 to tap a shamefully underused resource: the brainpower and creativity of inner-city kids who may never have considered studying science, let alone pursuing it as a career. Most recently, our Advanced Placement Environmental Science Program has been getting results. Offered to Philadelphia high school students, the year-long course includes 10 hours of classroom instruction each week, lab work, and field study. Participants have been accepted at colleges including Temple University and Penn State, received internships at the Wistar Institute and the Philadelphia Zoo, and won prizes in science fairs. By piquing interest, providing knowledge and experience, and offering support, we are cultivating batches of would-be scientists, science professionals, and policy makers with each graduating class. We do it on a shoestring budget cobbled from grants, in-kind donations, and a lot of prayer. If America is to retain its competitive edge, tapping the talents of young people living in our urban centers must become an urgent priority. Caste systems are melting on a global scale, but in the United States, for the most part, we have allowed our cities to languish. Failed policies have been tolerated by industry, given lip service by government, and frustrated families and students alike, many of whom have learned to dismiss science as "too hard." The result will not bode well for the United States in the long run. Outsourcing will have its short-term balance sheet benefits, but it portends a disastrous fiscal future for the United States if the scientific workforce infrastructure is allowed to crumble. Industry leaders insist they need to go where the workers are. We contend that we have a swath of potential that goes un-mined in every urban center in America, and Philadelphia - one of the fastest-growing biotechnology corridors in the nation - is a clear example. Some 200,000 students attend Philadelphia public schools. About six in 10 are African American, and another two in 10 are Asian or Latino. Our city remains the economic engine for the region and a major hub along the East Coast. Philadelphia's major competition used to come from places like Boston, North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, or even San Francisco. Today we are jockeying for position alongside Shanghai, Mumbai, and Moscow. Our city will lose this race if we don't create true pathways that bridge community to industry and train and retain workers to power science and research locally. We believe Cobbs Creek offers a model to other urban centers hoping to help young people get a taste of the excitement of science. We solidify the intersections of biology, chemistry, environmental, computer, life and physical science for students, not only as they relate to their daily lessons but also to the world around them. We pull genius and science fair-winning entries from students who would have gone unnoticed. We send Advanced Placement high school scholars to college, prepared to compete and contribute to both academia and Wall Street. The Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center is but one solid investment for next-generation scientists of color. Its mission - and that of other communities around the nation groping for similar accomplishments - must be embraced by industry as well as government if America is to retain its place on the world stage. It's about economics. It's about survival. When we power every available mind, we will unleash promise not seen since the Industrial Revolution. We are so close. It's time to realize that promise. Anthony H. Williams is a Pennsylvania State Senator for the 8th District; Carole Williams-Green is a retired School District of Philadelphia educator and founder emeritus of the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center. For more, visit www.cobbscreek.org.

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Anthony H. Williams

Carole Williams-Green

Published In

November 2006

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