NSF PR 97-11 - February 11, 1997
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Seminar to Spotlight Student-Scientist Collaboration
From upstate New York and Massachusetts Bay to Puget
Sound and the Pacific shoreline, thousands of grade-school
students are collecting data on Monarch butterfly
migrations, songbird populations, astronomy, and environmental
science. Professional researchers will use this data
to advance scientific knowledge.
In several projects supported by the National Science
Foundation, these elementary, middle, and high-school
students are learning basic scientific concepts and
investigative skills and collaborating with researchers
and other students around the globe over the Internet,
just as working scientists do.
Scientists, high-school and graduate students, and
educators from around the country will discuss the
possibilities and problems of this new movement to
infuse "authentic research" into the K-12 science
curriculum during a daylong forum at the annual meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in Seattle on Sun., Feb. 16.
NSF Director Neal Lane has made the integration of
research and education one of NSF's core strategies
for improving U.S. scientific literacy.
In a keynote address delivered at the first national
conference on student-scientist partnerships last
fall in Washington D.C., Lane stressed that the exchange
of knowledge between working scientists and K-12 teachers
and students also helps NSF achieve one of its long-range
goals; to improve science and math education for all
students.
"Professional scientists and engineers have to be
part of the process," he said. "This is the only way
we can expect to produce the finest scientists and
engineers for the 21st century, raise scientific and
technological literacy for all Americans, and continue
to lead all nations in scientific and technological
progress."
M. Patricia Morse, a marine biologist and the NSF
official who helped to organize the Seattle meeting,
notes that "more than ever before, scientists in government,
academia, and private industry want to be involved
in K-12 education."
But scientists too often find academic advancement
can be hampered, rather than advanced, through time
spent on such ventures as student-scientist partnerships.
A major goal of the Seattle conference is to develop
strategies to change long-standing restrictions on
academic advancement and to surmount other barriers
to increasing interaction between scientists and students.
"The dialogue needed to address these challenges has
just begun," Morse noted.
On Sunday morning, Maureen Munn, a researcher at the
University of Washington, Taya Marquardt, a student
at Seattle's Lakeside High School, and Barbara Schulz,
a Lakeside teacher, will discuss partnerships in genetics
and molecular biology in the context of the Human
Genome Project. Two afternoon sessions will feature
speakers from NSF, Cornell University, the University
of Washington, the University of Michigan, and the
University of California at Berkeley, among others,
discussing several collaborative ventures in a variety
of scientific fields.
The proceedings from the fall conference are being
published by TERC, a Cambridge, MA-based curriculum
developer which organized that meeting in conjunction
with NSF and The Concord Consortium, of Concord, Mass.
Copies of the proceedings will be available for discussion
at the AAAS meeting.
Editors: For more information about student-scientist
partnerships, see the TERC site on the World Wide
Web at: http://www.terc.edu/ssp/ssp.html
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