In Summer, Science Programs Abound For Kids And Teens

From Alabama to Wyoming, educators are worrying that not enough is being done to make the study of science more interesting for elementary and high school students in the United States. Indeed, those concerned about the scientist shortage that is expected to hit the U.S. in the mid-1990s believe that boosting science education is the key to getting more young people interested in taking up a science career. A wide variety of community and national organizations have risen to this challenge, coming up with exciting summer courses for children and teenagers, from locally based programs to those whose scope is global and even beyond, covering a range of abilities and topics. It's no wonder that summer is a time when science programs for youngsters abound; in summertime the learnin' is easy. Classrooms, textbooks, tests, and lab exercises are replaced with individual discovery and adventure. In summer, a child can learn about development by tending a garden or catching tadpoles, marvel at the length of a July day when reminded of February's early sunsets, and experience the violent thunderstorms that conclude many a muggy afternoon. As the season ends, a budding scientist may be lucky enough to witness a spectacular meteor shower. Even though the spring thaw has not yet begun, it's a good idea for young people who want to share in such experiences to start thinking of summer now. Many of these programs fill up by March or April. In addition, now is a good time for scientists to begin thinking about offering their services as instructors for summer courses. With hundreds of exciting projects to choose from, it's impossible to cover them all, or even to select only the best. So The Scientist took a cue from biology, and went for diversity. Following is a sampling of summer science programs for children and teenagers. * For a listing of more than 600 science programs for elementary school through high school students throughout the U.S., send $3 to: Directory of Student Science Training Programs Science Service 1719 N St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 785-2255 Thacher School Summer Science Program 5025 Thacher Rd. Ojai, Calif. 93023 (805) 646-4377 Contact: Roger Klausler Scotia-Glenville Traveling Children's Museum 102 N. Ballston Ave. Scotia, N.Y. 12302 (518) 346-1764 Contact: Joan Gould EARTHWATCH 680 Mount Auburn St. Box 403 Watertown, Mass. 02272 (617) 926-8200 Contact: Kara Bettigole Science Scholars Award Program National Kidney Foundation 30 E. 33rd St. New York, N.Y. 10016 (800) 622-9010 Contact: Cynthia Wolkovich * SEED and U.S. National ~~Chemistry Olympiad Education Division American Chemical Society 1155 16th St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 872-6169 Contact: Denise Creech Hands-On-Science 4910 Macon Rd. Rockville, Md. 20852 (301) 881-1142 Contact: Phyllis Katz Cornell University Summer College USPS 132-860 B12 Ives Hall, Box 126 Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-3901 (607) 255-3976 Contact: Abby H. Eller Cornell Environmental Science Interns Program Cornell University Fernow Hall Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-3001 (607) 255-2114 Contact: Marianne Krasny Summer Veterinary Research Apprentice Program for Minority Students College of Veterinary Medicine Cornell University C117 Schurman Hall Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-6401 (607) 253-3709 Contact: Shenetta Selden ADDITIONAL SUMMER SCIENCE PROGRAMS For a listing of more than 600 science programs for elementary school through high school students throughout the United States, send $3 to: Directory of Student Science Training Programs Science Service 1719 N St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 785-2255 For Green Thumbs and Growing Minds The New York Botanical Garden Bronx, N.Y. 10458-5126 (212) 220-8982 "Garden crafters," ages 5 to 16, plan and plant a garden. Program is offered twice weekly in July and August. "Garden sprouts," ages 3 to 5, dig, plant, weed, water, and watch plants grow. The weekly program also features cooking and crafts. Cost: Garden crafters $55, garden sprouts $36. Scholarships available. Bennington July Program Bennington College Bennington, Vt. 05201 (802) 442-5401 Contact: Sherri Alper, director Each year, the program provides intensive, but noncompetitive, study of an area of science not offered in high school. Students, ages 15 to 17, work closely with faculty in small groups. The 1991 offering is "Genetics and the New Biotechnology." Cost: $2,250 Partners in Science Liberty Science Center 75 Montgomery St. Jersey City, N.J. 07302 (201) 451-0006 Contact: Dana Levine For eight weeks, gifted high school juniors and seniors participate in research and seminars and receive career and college counseling at university, industry, and government facilities in New Jersey. Participants present a research paper at Rutgers University. Cost: $500 (participant's high school pays part) Center for the Advancement of Academically Talented Youth (CTY) CTY Summer Programs 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, Md. 21218 (301) 338-8427 Contact: Liz Albert An intensive, fast-paced lab and lecture course, five hours a day, for seventh-graders. Applicants take SATs to qualify for the program, and must have scores equal to or better than the national high school senior average. Students have a choice of 10 science areas. Sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, the program is held at four sites: Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa.; Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.; Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; and University of the Redlands, Redlands, Calif. Cost: $1,480 Adirondack Life Science Experience Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 12866 (518) 584-5000 Contact: Raymond Giguere, Chemistry Department Intense study of the goals of modern biology, with a focus on how to become a scientist, for students in seventh to ninth grades. Emphasis on biology, biochemistry, and medicine. Includes field trips in the Adirondacks; study of veterinary medicine at Saratoga racetrack; and projects focusing on computers, biotech equipment, entomology, horticulture, and agriculture. Cost: $540 for commuters, $690 for residential students High School Student Research Apprenticeship Argonne National Laboratory Argonne Division of Educational Programs Pre-College Programs Argonne, Ill. 60439-4845 (708) 972-3373 Contact: Robert W. Springer, director High school sophomores and juniors learn the scientific method by using sophisticated equipment to solve research problems. Five-week and one-week programs are offered, as well as a two-week Department of Energy "research and enrichment experience" in superconductivity and materials science. Cost: Call for information NASA High School Apprentice Research Program National Aeronautics and Space Administration Educational Affairs Division 400 Maryland Ave., S.W. Washington, D.C. 20546 (202) 453-1110 Contact: Robert Brown, director At each of nine field centers across the U.S., 20 highly qualified minority students in grades 10 to 12 work with a NASA scientist or engineer for eight weeks. Applicants must live within commuting distance to any participating field center. Cost: Program is subsidized; participants receive a stipend The Sky's The Limit In the summer of 1989, Jessica Wolpaw, now a freshman at Amherst College in Massachusetts, spent a great deal of time with Althea. Althea is an asteroid, and Wolpaw and two other students were charged with tracking her orbit. The trio joined 10 other teams, each with its own asteroid. This celestial summer was part of the Thacher School Summer Science Program, held at a coed boarding school in Ojai, Calif., but sponsored largely by nearby Pomona College as part of the National Science Foundation's Young Scholars Program. In order to qualify for the program, all applicants must show unusual talent in the fields of science and mathematics. The experience is intense as well as unique, its graduates say. Participants spend five hours attending lectures in college-level physics, math, computer science, and astronomy six mornings a week. Afternoons are often devoted to the "question of the day," which, according to Wolpaw, is a "strange math or physics problem." After dinner, the members of each asteroid team take shifts in the school's observatories. By the end of the six-week session, the teams' computer trackings are combined into one program, integrating their hard work to paint a picture of the heavens. What Wolpaw recalls most fondly about her Thacher summer are the people, a comment echoed by many other young summer scientists. "You really get to know your teammates," Wolpaw says. "And the guest lecturers [often Nobel laureates] were wonderful--you could talk to them, go to dinner, or walk on the beach. They treated us like adults." Chances are Wolpaw would have pursued a career in science even without her memorable summer with Althea. But her Thacher experience has been helping her achieve her goal: "It helped me through calculus last year in high school because I could see the applications. I also gained a good grasp of how to work a whole problem through." Tuition for the Thacher summer is $1,500, but scholarships are available. Science On The Road At the other end of the United States, and at the other end of the intellectual spectrum from the Thacher school's asteroid trackers, sit 12 children in a circle in a dreary school basement. It is a rainy summer day in Schenectady, N.Y. Most of the kids listen attentively as the teacher, Karen Wang, passes around birds' nests, explaining the peculiarities of each structure. The youngsters interrupt her excitedly with tales of their own avian discoveries. But when the program shifts to the hands-on part--fashioning nests out of sticks, straw, twine, and mud--it becomes a little more obvious that these aren't ordinary children. They are all mentally retarded or developmentally delayed. But that certainly doesn't mean that they can't understand or appreciate the architectural wonder of a barn swallow's use of mud to strengthen its nest. Even the profoundly retarded boy who sits rocking in a corner is helped to build a nest, his grin attesting to the success of this endeavor. "Building a Bird's Nest" is just one of the several interactive science programs offered by the Scotia-Glenville Traveling Children's Museum, which serves the Albany area in New York. The museum is based in a small Victorian house full of various collections. Its nooks and crannies are crammed with bones and fossils, as well as preserved moths and butterflies. The museum offers an array of participatory experiences for young people in addition to its special programs for retarded children. During the school year, museum teachers take the collections to grade school classrooms. Come summertime, popular programs are offered--and new ones tried out--on eager-to-learn students at schools, camps, and community centers. A camp or community center session for 12 to 30 kids costs $60; programs open to the public generally charge $6 per child. Favorites include "Soap Bubble Science," in which children learn about the physics behind bubble formation; "Go Fly a Kite," which offers a kid's eye view of aerodynamics; and "Kaleidoscopes," in which participants learn the properties of light. Globe Trotting Those aged 16 and over who'd like to combine science with travel might want to consider EARTHWATCH, a Watertown, Mass., organization that enables ordinary folks to participate in scientific expeditions. An EARTHWATCHer might teach English grammar to dolphins in Hawaii; decipher the natural history of glaciers on Mount Olympus in Greece; radio-collar kangaroos in New South Wales; analyze the chemical contents of a volcano in Siberia; or probe the role of honeybees in Australian ecosystems. "Volunteers spend two to three weeks working side-by-side with scientists in the field," says EARTHWATCH spokeswoman Kara Bettigole. "No special skills are necessary, just willingness to work and learn." A typical stint costs $1,000 and up, plus travel expenses, but scholarships are available. It can be an unforgettable way for a mature teen to spend a summer. "We have had great success with youth on our projects; they are usually very enthusiastic and eager to learn about the subject matter," Bettigole adds. One participant who gives high marks to the program is Susannah Thayer, a 17-year-old from Tampa, Fla., who plans to begin her freshman year at Harvard University in the fall. She's gone on two trips. In the summer of 1988, she found herself watching turtles in Yucatan, Mexico. "We were trying to collect the eggs of loggerhead turtles who came on the beach at night," she recalls. "We would patrol the beaches from about 9 P.M. to 3 A.M. When a turtle showed up, we'd duck down and wait for it to come on shore so we wouldn't scare it. It dug a hole with its back flippers and started laying eggs. This would put it in a trance. Then we'd take measurements of its flippers, head, and body length." Last summer Thayer tracked lemon sharks in a lagoon in Bimini, luring the animals with bait consisting of barracuda meat with radio transmitters attached. Nurturing Researchers According to the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Medical Colleges, applications to medical school declined 25 percent between 1984 and 1988, with interest in medical research particularly on the wane. Although more than 67 million Americans suffer kidney damage from hypertension and diabetes, renal medicine is an unpopular choice of specialty among newly minted doctors. The National Kidney Foundation, concerned over these trends, has started a Science Scholars Award Program, matching talented high school students entering their senior year with medical researchers for the summer. Students work in the lab alongside the scientists. Each of this year's eight students will receive a stipend; initial funding is provided by the Ford Motor Co. of Detroit. The program promises to have repercussions beyond nephrology. "Of course, the foundation hopes that the Science Scholars Award Program will encourage people to pursue careers in biomedical research related to kidney and associated diseases," says H. David Humes, chairman of the program. "But because science is so interrelated, expanding our collective base of knowledge will help all fields. And, of course, expanding our potential pool of young investigators can be of benefit to all science." Sowing The SEEDS Of Science To help improve the grades and test scores of minority and economically disadvantaged high school students, the American Chemical Society started Project SEED (Summer Educational Experience for the Disadvantaged) in 1970. "Students spend one to 10 weeks in the summer working full-time in a research lab, mostly at universities, but at some corporate and government labs, too," says national chairman Ed Harper of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "We're not looking at students who make all A's, because when you're dealing with the economically disadvantaged, lots of students with ability don't make A's. So we ask teachers to select students based on their potential." Participants receive a stipend of $1,200. In 1990, 320 students participated at 85 sites, in 27 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. For example, last summer at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, 17 SEED students did research in medical genetics, microbiology, pediatrics, immunology, and nephrology. This summer, 20 students will be supported at Department of Energy national labs by a new $250,000 grant from the agency. Nichole Mason, a SEED student last year, calls her summer "a grand experience." Mason, who did her SEED project at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., says that "by participating in the biological control sector I've learned that insects that are seen on a daily basis may be useful to the environment economically, and help beautify our surroundings." A Child's Eye View An innovative organization in Rockville, Md., gears its local science programs to the world of the four-, five-, and six-year-old, and trains teachers from all over the U.S. to carry out the projects. Hands-on-Science runs three two-week sessions each summer. The first session, "All About Me," introduces the child to his or her body. "We take a very typical nursery school activity--having the child lie down on paper and outline his body--but go beyond where nursery school leaves off," says director Phyllis Katz. "For six days we build a skeleton onto the outline. We use rubber bands to represent muscle action. By the time the outline goes home, it is a functional model." The remaining days focus on the senses. In the second session, "My Environment," children look at grass, pets, shells, and rocks, and become aware of what is around them. This experience mirrors the next stage in their development. The third session is the most intellectually challenging, dealing with change over time. "Children see changes from infancy to adult in animals. They look at garbage to get across the concept of decay, and grow seeds," Katz says. The popular programs are booked solid by March for the Montgomery County, Md., area. The cost is $80 per session, which meets 2 1/2 hours each day. This summer a pilot program for fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders will debut, thanks to a grant from W.R. Grace & Co., a New York-based chemical company. A Cornucopia At Cornell Cornell University, nestled in the hills of the spectacular Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, offers several interesting summer programs. At Summer College, outstanding high school juniors and seniors get a taste of college life. They take two courses and a noncredit "exploration seminar." The Cornell summer experience gives students the opportunity to earn up to eight college credits, as well as a head start in dealing with the many changes that going away to college brings. Summer College runs from June 22 to August 6, with applications due by April 19. Cost is $3,500, with limited scholarships available, earmarked mostly for minorities. Cornell will also offer, pending NSF Young Scholars funding, a program that introduces junior and senior high school students to the world of the scientist. "The Cornell Environmental Sciences Intern Program will provide opportunities for 15 young people to participate in hands-on activities designed to engage them in finding a solution for problems, and in understanding the process used to find the solution," explains Marianne Krasny, an assistant professor of forest science. Another component of the program is an outreach to the community, in which the interns teach weekly lessons in environmental sciences to local junior high students. Recent summer environmental research endeavors at Cornell include tracking PCBs in the Lake Ontario food web, assessing the effects of acid rain on red spruce seedling physiology, and developing degradation methods for pesticides. In a third program, over at Cornell's veterinary school, minority high school students can participate in a summer research apprentice program. The six-week session pays students a minimum-wage stipend, plus room and board. The experience gives students the opportunity to learn a range of skills not often encountered in typical high school classes, or even college courses. "Student assignments provide experience with identification of species of bacteria; presurgical preparation of animals; familiarity with laboratory instruments, such as pH meters, centrifuges, microscopes, and spectrophotometers; pathological findings of all types of disease in many species of animals, both wild and domestic; and restraining and handling various animals, including rabbits, mice, goats, dogs, horses, and cows," says Shenetta Selden, admissions officer for the program. Chemistry Olympiad The annual International Chemistry Olympiad, begun by the American Chemical Society in 1984, is organized somewhat like a beauty pageant: Local competitions, consisting of written and lab tests conducted by ACS chapters, feed into regional contests, culminating when qualified high school students take the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad Exam in April. The 22 top scorers attend a 10-day study camp at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., in June. From this group, four students are selected to compete at the international level. The 1991 competition will be held in Lodz, Poland, with gold, silver, and bronze medals awarded. Hedy Edmonds of Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn., the only female from the U.S. to reach the final tier, still keeps in touch with her friend Nadya from Bulgaria, whom she met at the 1986 competition in Leiden, Holland. Edmonds went on to major in chemistry at Yale University. Eric Kelson of Bountiful High School in Bountiful, Utah, competed a year earlier in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, and is now in working on his Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Kelson says his experience "helped to broaden my perception of people and nationalities." In July 1992, the Chemistry Olympiad comes to the U.S., with seven days in Pittsburgh and three in Washington, D.C. Like other international competitions, this one will entail five hours each day of written tests and practical exams for the 120 students, hailing from 30 nations. But there will also be time for fun and learning about the host country--tours of labs and museums, picnics, movies, and even a Pittsburgh Pirates game. And that's what summertime, and science, are all about--fun. Ricki Lewis teaches biology at the State University of New York, Albany, and brings rocks and birds' nests to grade school classrooms.

In Summer, Science Programs Abound For Kids And Teens

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