Thirteen-year-old Eunice Duran gazes in amazement at the buzzing insect she just caught in her butterfly net. Her excitement attracts her classmates and two ASU graduate students, Nathan Morehouse and Lisa Taylor, who are mentoring the science class’ field trip to the Rio Salado Project.
As the students gather around the bee-like creature, Morehouse takes the opportunity to engage the class in an impromptu science lesson, revealing the insect is actually a fly that can mimic the appearance and buzzing sounds of a bee.
Duran and her classmates are just some of the forty-nine students participating in ASU’s Graduate Partners in Science Education (GPSE), a program that enables ASU graduate students from the School of Life Sciences to work with junior high students from Phoenix Preparatory Academy, a central Phoenix middle school. By conducting field experiments in natural environments, students learn how science is used in the real world while increasing their own proficiency in developing experiments, taking notes, and working in teams.
“We want to grease the interaction between ASU graduate students interested in doing community outreach and inner city schools that are struggling to enrich their science curriculum,” states Morehouse, a PhD candidate and director of GPSE who helped found the program with fellow graduate student Jon Davis in 2005. “It’s shocking, but there’s no requirement to take any science until you hit the seventh grade. So part of this program is spent making sure these students learn some basic scientific tool sets.”
During the fall, ASU mentors engage seventh and eighth graders in three multi-week ecology, microbiology, and animal behavior modules that help students develop skills for collecting data, forming hypotheses, and analyzing their findings. In the spring, students are given the option of using their skills to conduct weekly field experiments.
This spring, all of the students chose to engage in field work and explore animal behavior and biology at the Rio Salado Project and Phoenix Zoo. Their experiments will help provide useful information for both the desert river habitat and zoo.
“For students to get out of the school and do real science out in the community has been a wonderful opportunity,” states Karen Griff, a Phoenix Preparatory Academy science teacher, who works with fellow science teacher Keith Brazier to select students for GPSE. “As far as we know, we are the only school in the Valley that has a program like this. And doing these experiments has helped students get better at math, at graphing, at writing – it really helps them all the way around.”
Griff’s enthusiasm is shared by students conducting experiments at the Rio Salado Project, who appreciate the excitement and hands-on approach their mentors bring to their science class.
“Take a look at this bee,” says Lisa Taylor, a PhD student specializing in arachnids and insects, as she shows her latest find to thirteen-year-old Noelle Estrella. “You can see the pollen still stuck to its legs.”
As Taylor points out minute details about the bee’s biology, her students wield butterfly nets and search the bushes, streams, and trees for more specimens, finding everything from wolf spiders to caterpillars to a mantis egg case. Each find yields another science lesson from their mentor – and one more addition to the collection of arachnids and insects the group is assembling to help teach future school tours about the wildlife at Rio Salado Project.
Further down the nature trail, Taylor’s group passes by PhD ornithology student Melissa Meadows and her students who have constructed special feeders to test bird intelligence and compare beak shapes to the types of native seeds birds can eat. By studying the foods different species consume, students can provide park rangers with information about the birds’ dietary preferences.
“I love the opportunity to give back what I was given when I was a kid and got to participate in cool projects,” states Meadows. “It’s great to see the kids grow and learn and get interested in science. I’m also a birdwatcher from back east, so being out here at Rio Salado is actually helping me learn more about western bird species.”
Eleven miles away, another group of Phoenix Preparatory Academy students are conducting field experiments at the Phoenix Zoo. Like the experiments at Rio Salado Project, the zoo experiments are designed to benefit the Phoenix Zoo.
“Any time we find something that excites the animals, gets them active, or promotes their natural behavior, we’ll continue to use that as enrichment for them,” says Gabby Hebert, Manager of Guest Experiences for the Phoenix Zoo who arranged for the zookeepers to teach students about the animals. “So if the students’ experiments reveal animals respond well to certain colors or sounds, their habitats may be designed differently.”
With this in mind, mentors and students decided to study the ways zoo animals respond to different stimuli. At the squirrel monkey exhibit, PhD candidate Lisa Lopez and her students color paper bags and test their theories on monkey color vision by observing which bags the monkeys play with. A second group plays recorded animal and city sounds inside the habitat to test the monkeys’ responses to certain noises.
At another exhibit, Hoski Schaafsma, also a PhD candidate, encourages his students to take detailed notes as they observe Reba, a 35-year-old Asian elephant, wrap her trunk around empty beer kegs that have been painted red, blue, and yellow to test her color preferences. Learning if an animal reacts calmly or aggressively to certain colors or sounds can also affect the techniques zookeepers develop in training an animal to take their medication or move from one habitat to another.
“One of the biggest things we talk about is how to construct a question and then create an experiment that will answer your question,” states Schaafsma. “I also try to get students to take a lot of notes so they learn to translate what they’re seeing into notation form.”
Ultimately, all of the program’s partners hope the students will enter their experiments into science fairs, including the upcoming Central Arizona Regional Science & Engineering Fair (CARSEF). Currently, students have entered ten projects into the fair.
“We’re going to enter our experiment into CARSEF depending on our progress,” says fourteen-year-old Rhakim Gentry. “I hope we win because I’ve heard they’ve got good prizes, like free laptops and scholarships.”
But GPSE’s work does not end with field experiments and science fairs. On March 1st, GPSE took students on a walking tour of ASU at the Tempe campus to see the university’s science facilities and hear what college life is like from undergraduates in science programs, helping the students gain an interest in higher learning.
Additional field trips include one to the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a research facility in downtown Phoenix, where students got to learn about the robotic equipment scientists use for conducting genetic screenings to provide better treatment for people of certain genotypes. GPSE feels these experiences will show students the types of jobs a science education can prepare them for.
“One of GPSE’s major goals is to make a trajectory accessible to the students – to introduce them to the exciting opportunities that can help further their education,” states Morehouse. “We really want to see them graduate from high school, go on to college, and then on to fulfilling and rewarding careers.”
Graduate Partners in Science Education is a graduate student organized and staffed program in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. Students work closely with teachers and administrators at Phoenix Preparatory Academy to provide optimal support for the school’s science program. Funding for GPSE comes entirely from local institutions including the Phoenix Elementary School District, ASU School of Life Sciences, Division of Graduate Studies, Graduate Professional Student Association, Fulton School of Engineering, and the Center for Research in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (CRESMET). Find out more by visiting the GPSE web site.
Rio Salado Project is a 595-acre desert river habitat that functions as an outdoor classroom for schools and nature enthusiasts. Learn more about the project at its web site.
The Phoenix Zoo offers many activities and educational opportunities for schools and researchers. Discover more by visiting its web site.
GPSE ASU Student Mentors/Staff:
Nathan Morehouse
Jon Davis
Lisa Taylor
Melissa Meadows
Hugo Beraldi-Campesi
Jake Brashears
Raul Gutierrez
Lisa Lopez
Hoski Schaafsma
Zach Stahlschmidt
Phoenix Preparatory Academy Partners:
Karen Griff
Keith Brazier
John Ewing
