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May 18, 2004
Colleges Join Hands to Help Kids, Teachers
Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, neighbors in suburban Philadelphia, are teaming up to collectively apply their strengths in the life sciences to school children and teachers in the city nearby. Haverford's Integrated Natural Sciences Center and the Center for Science and Society at Bryn Mawr will use part of new four-year science education grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to mentor middle- and high-school students and to give teachers tools to teach science better.
Undergraduates from Haverford will teach lectures and labs for high school students primarily from groups underrepresented in the sciences, while Bryn Mawr will match faculty, students, and teachers to work together on classroom science projects in a program called Scientists on Demand.
Fridays in the Lab will bring high school students to Bryn Mawr four times during the academic year to observe laboratory demonstrations and conduct experiments in neurobiology and behavior, biodiversity, water chemistry, and robotics. Undergraduates from Bryn Mawr and Haverford will assist in the labs.
Summer will see selected high school students from the Philadelphia area joining the labs of Haverford faculty for four-week research experiences, while teachers can attend workshops at Haverford and Bryn Mawr, covering subjects such as computer-aided visualization of biological molecules and the physics of medical technologies.
The World Wide Web will provide a key resource for the colleges' collaborative outreach efforts. Bryn Mawr and Haverford will create a joint, web-based directory of faculty, undergraduate, and schoolteachers who want to work together on classroom science projects. Haverford students plan to develop a web site called Experiments in Evidence, to help high school teachers find new ways to use classic biology and chemistry experiments. The colleges also plan a web site that will provide one-stop shopping for the community outreach activities of both.
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Cindy Fox Aisen
