Abstract
Educational inequity is widely prevalent in United States (U.S.) public schools and creates barriers to STEM education for underserved and underrepresented populations, including racial minority, low-income, and first-generation college students. Scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) recognized the need in its community, the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area, to improve STEM education by increasing opportunities for STEM experiential learning. By 1995, WRAIR scientists began investigating how to bring science-enthusiastic but novice high school (HS) students into their laboratories where they could be mentored, along with providing a stipend to mitigate financial barriers; importantly, this process was funded by two Science Education Partnership Awards from 2001-2006. WRAIR’s Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science (GEMS) program now guides local middle and HS students to take part in hands-on, inquiry-based STEM laboratory investigations led by undergraduate “near peer mentors” (NPMs), so named due to their close age to participants. GEMS is now sustained at 14 sites nationwide through the U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program. Recent evaluations of the program explore service to underrepresented groups in STEM and growth of the local program. Further evaluation of the nationwide programs reveals positive student feedback, especially regarding working with NPMs and hands-on learning.
Highlights
STEM education is deeply impacted by funding inequities that plague our public education system (Bloome et al, 2006; Wagner, 2019)
The planning phase begins in the early fall, as we evaluate our implementation of the previous summer GEMS program at the US Army Educational Outreach Program (USAEOP) GEMS review meeting
We recently reported our findings in a study and found that former Near Peer Mentor (NPM) overwhelmingly tended to persist in STEM and/or STEM education fields (39 out of 40 online survey respondents) and had an increased commitment to mentorship and STEM education (Anderson et al, 2019)
Summary
STEM education is deeply impacted by funding inequities that plague our public education system (Bloome et al, 2006; Wagner, 2019). To address systemic inequities in science education, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) aimed to develop a summer experience for underserved and underrepresented groups in STEM. This effort strove to increase students’ interest and persistence in STEM education and careers, and led to the creation of the Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science (GEMS) summer program. Research has shown that students can lose the desire to pursue a STEM career as early as middle school (Maltese et al, 2014; Sadler et al, 2012; Wyss et al, 2012).
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