By: Bradie | November 6 2009 | Category: Issues in Education
A large majority of Americans -- 76%-- believe that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is very important for the nation's competitiveness and its future economic prosperity. Another 21% believe it’s somewhat important.
A solid 92% of Americans think that research is important to the U.S. economy, and 88% believe that scientific research is important for job creation and incomes.
Those statistics were part of a "Your Congress Your Health" survey completed this past June for Research!America by Charlton Research Company. Research!America is a nonprofit alliance for health-research support.
It is into this seemingly aware public marketplace that “Making the Connection,” a report by the Massachusetts Graduation and Dropout Prevention and Recovery Commission, has just been released.
Can this commissioners’ report generate the energy to get the money, secure the cooperation from education stakeholders, and, most important, garner the public’s support needed to cut the State’s dropout rate of 10,000 students per year in half in the next five years?
People attending the Commission’s public meetings over the past year continually expressed their doubts that the necessary funding for an effort of this size would be available.
Reports similar to “Making the Connection,” with its focus on cutting dramatically the number of student dropouts, are, in one model form or another, being prepared now in nearly every state in the country. Will this focus on student dropout rates lead to significantly stronger STEM education initiatives? Only time will tell.
The Massachusetts report highlights the cost to society of dropouts. For instance, they make up the majority (70%) of jail and prison populations in the state. The U.S. Department of Justice statistics put the annual cost of maintaining one prisoner at about $35,000 per year. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that the average cost of maintaining a student in public school is about $9,600 per year.
The report also makes the point that over a lifetime, the average high school dropout in Massachusetts will impose a net fiscal burden of over $118,000 in cash and other benefits -- such as food stamps, healthcare, and childcare subsidies -- on State and Federal taxpayers.
The Alliance for Excellent Educationhas found that over the course of his or her lifetime, a high school dropout will earn, on average, about $260,000 less than a high school graduate. In comparison, the average high school graduate will contribute $319,000 more in paid taxes than he or she will receive from State and Federal governments in the form of subsidies.
Questions for today:
What can educators and public officials at the community level do to reinforce the public's strong belief in the importance of STEM education and research to gro wing America's competitiveness and eco nomy?
What can teachers do to help students and parents understand the importance of STEM education and research to America's position in global competitiveness and the strength of its economy?
On Oct. 5, 2007, three American researchers -- Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak -- were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This marks a milestone because it’s the first time two women have shared a Nobel prize. In a recent online interview, Blackburn said the honor for her and Greider is “a hopeful sign” for women. In the future, she said, people will say, “Oh yes, it’s not too unusual to have women getting Nobel prizes. Two got one this year. I hope it becomes very normal.” You can listen to the scientists’ reactions to The Call announcing their award at the Nobel Web site.
Their story begins with chromosomes, the giant complexes of DNA and proteins found in our cells. When cells divide, they make a copy of each chromosome, so the daughter cell receives a full complement of DNA. The enzymes that control this process can’t quite copy the chromosome all the way to the end, so a little bit of the chromosome is lost every time a cell divides. Enter the telomere and our Nobelists’ research.
Telomeres are short regions of repetitive DNA that sit at the ends of chromosomes but don’t encode any genes. When a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter, not the business part of the chromosomes. With each cell division, the telomeres get shorter. Scientists believe that this telomere shortening is in part responsible for the limited lifespan of most cells. However, some cells, including stem cells that live for the life of an organism, can replace telomeres through the action of the enzyme telomerase.
Telomerase is turned off in most cells, but it’s reactivated in many cancer cells. This allows the cancer cells to replicate many more times than normal. This has opened the possibility of treating cancer by zeroing in on telomerase. Clinical trials are under way to evaluate vaccines directed against cells with elevated telomerase activity.
The Nobelists’ research also opens up a wide range of investigations into the roles that telomeres and telomerase play in aging. This is because as we age, more and more of our cells have shortened telomeres. Some cells with short telomeres die while others “senesce,’ which means they remain in place but can’t divide and have reduced functional capacity. If we have too many senescent cells, normal processes are less efficient, and repairing even minor damage becomes difficult.
By: Gina | October 29 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
Like I said, I get bored easily. After a while, I got tired of investigating things that my boss wanted to study and wanted to try out some new ideas of my own. That meant I needed my own lab, which in turn meant I needed my own faculty position at a university. Getting one of those is not as easy as it sounds, but I worked hard and succeeded.
Great! Now all I needed was money. To get that, I needed to write a grant. Who would have thought that I would have to be a good writer to be a scientist? Between writing articles for scientific journals and applying for grants, I spent a lot of my time writing. Worse yet, my research involved doing experiments with mice and collecting blood from people. Both require special approval. I did lots of paper work to explain why it made scientific sense to study mice and collect human blood. I had to show how I was going to minimize any possible distress for the mice and protect the health and privacy of my human volunteers. As a new kid on the block, it was all pretty overwhelming, but I survived and got my lab going.
Of course, professors teach, too, so I spent a lot of my time doing that. I taught undergraduate and graduate courses and had students and postdocs in my lab doing research. In the summer, I even worked with some high school students. One fun thing about being a scientist is meeting people from all over the world. I had people from India, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Serbia, and China working in my lab. I worked with other faculty from Nigeria, Romania, Germany, Canada, and Brazil, among others. Today, my three closest friends are a German, a Bulgarian, and an American.
There is a third part of being a university professor, but more about that next time.
By: Gina | October 28 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
When it came time to leave my fellowship, I was still crazy about doing experiments in the laboratory. To keep doing lab work, I could choose between an industry and a university lab. (I didn’t know it at the time, but I could have considered one of the many government labs, too.) I decided on an academic job because, frankly, I still liked being able to play basketball in the middle of the day. I found a job working in a lab with a professor who was studying how genes get turned on and off. Oops! Did I change research areas again? Well, I get bored easily!
One of my best friends who also loved working in the lab took a job in industry. No more midday sports, but he had kids and wanted to work regular hours. It was perfect for him. Besides, industry usually pays better than academia.
Another friend still loved science but just didn’t want to work in a laboratory any more. She got a job in a university office that helps scientists patent and commercialize their discoveries. Her job was to work with the lawyers in the office to help them better understand the science behind the products and devices they were helping commercialize.
While I was looking for my job, I heard from a friend from my old theoretical chemistry days. He had become a full-time musician. He was applying all his computer skills to making electronic music.
Whew! We all got jobs, said our goodbyes, and moved to Seattle, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Boston.
By: Gina | October 22 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
Twenty years ago, I had finished my Ph.D. and was working as a postdoctoral fellow. That means I was working in the lab pretty much all day every day. Since I got my Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, chemistry that uses computers not test tubes, you might think I spent my postdoc days in front of a computer. Nope! I was working in a biochemistry lab. Huh? Well, in the late 1980s, there weren’t a lot of jobs for theoretical chemists. Luckily, a science education opens doors, and I had offers to work in all kinds of labs. I liked biochemistry, so I chose that.
Early on, I spent my days reading scientific papers to learn what other scientists were doing, and then I used that knowledge and my training in the scientific method to design and plan experiments. When things went well and I made new discoveries, my boss and I wrote papers and sent them to scientific journals for publication. After a bunch of other scientists reviewed them and we answered their questions and maybe did a few more experiments, they were published. It usually took a year or two to get one paper published.
It wasn’t all work. I also spent a good part of many days playing touch football and basketball. One good thing about being a scientist is that in many labs, you can work pretty much whatever hours you want. Of course, if I played basketball during the day, I was in the lab working late at night (even after I broke my foot-- twice!).
By: Gina | October 20 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
Ever wonder what a scientist does all day? As a scientist, I have a pretty good idea. OK, at least I know what some of my scientist friends and I do. And what I do now is very different from what I did 10 years ago, which was different from what I did 10 years before that. There’s clearly plenty of room for growth and change as a scientist. Becoming a scientist does not mean you need to spend the rest of your life in the lab, but you can if you want. Some of my friends still do just that – working in the lab is their passion. But I, like many other scientists, have taken a career path that uses my scientific training not just to make new discoveries in the laboratory but also in ways you might never have imagined.
I want to share my story and those of a few of my friends and show you that being a scientist can be fun and challenging and take you in many directions. Look for my blogs on the next few Tuesdays and Thursdays:
The researchers compared results from students in the same school whose teachers either had or hadn’t participated in the program. The overall increase was measured over a four-year period starting with the academic year before CUSRP participation.
In the first and second years after teachers entered CUSRP, 4.2% more students of participating teachers passed the Regents exam in science than students of nonparticipating teachers. In the third and fourth years after entering CUSRP, the proportion jumped to 10.1%.
Silverstein, the study’s lead investigator, founded the Columbia program 20 years ago. He says that teachers who participate in CUSRP are retained in education and in classroom teaching in New York City public schools at a 3-to-4-fold higher rate than nonparticipating teachers. "This decrease in teacher attrition increases the stability of schools and reduces teacher recruitment costs,” he says.
Silverstein told Changing Courses that the program is cost-effective. "We estimate it returns $1.14 in immediate benefits to New York City's Department of Education and $10.27 in long-term benefits to society as a whole for every dollar its supporters invest in the program.”
Each teacher accepted into CUSRP is referred to a Columbia University faculty member who is willing to mentor the teacher and is working in an area of interest to the teacher.
The CUSRP teachers assemble one day a week each summer for professional development activities. These include seminars, visits to science museums, demonstrations of science teaching and teaching materials, training in data-driven instruction and in transferring science concepts and technologies in the classroom, and teacher-led research presentations.
Silverstein sees these results as a validation of CUSRP. He was among the scientist-statesmen who, 20 years ago, were concerned with the quality of science instruction in our nation’s high schools and its potential impact on both the recruitment of the next generation of scientists and the educa tion of a scient ifically literate electorate.
Silverstein says, "Even if we knew how to improve science teacher education, our nation could not train enough new science teachers in the next 15 to 20 years to improve the quality of U.S. secondary science education. Like it or not, unless we invest in elevating the performance of teachers presently in service, we will make little progress in elevating the quality of science education in our schools. The program we describe in Science this week engages universities, medical school faculties, and local colleges with the teachers from the schools in the surrounding communities.”
CUSRP works, it’s cost effective, and it can be replicated. These are the points Silverstein and his colleagues strive to make in this week’s report.
Question of the day: Can you see this program being started in your community?
A large majority of Americans -- 76%-- believe that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is very important for the nation's competitiveness and its future economic prosperity. Another 21% believe it’s somewhat important.
by Charlton Research Company. Research!America is a nonprofit alliance for health-research support.
E-mail This Entry | 
Bookmark to Delicious
On Oct. 5, 2007, three American researchers -- Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak -- were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This marks a milestone because it’s the first time two women have shared a Nobel prize. In a recent online interview, Blackburn said the honor for her and Greider is “a hopeful sign” for women. In the future, she said, people will say, “Oh yes, it’s not too unusual to have women getting Nobel prizes. Two got one this year. I hope it becomes very normal.” You can listen to the scientists’ reactions to The Call announcing their award at the Nobel Web site. 
Like I said, I get bored easily. After a while, I got tired of investigating things that my boss wanted to study and wanted to try out some new ideas of my own. That meant I needed my own lab, which in turn meant I needed my own faculty position at a university. Getting one of those is not as easy as it sounds, but I worked hard and succeeded.
When it came time to leave my fellowship, I was still crazy about doing experiments in the laboratory. To keep doing lab work, I could choose between an industry and a university lab. (I didn’t know it at the time, but I could have considered one of the many government labs, too.) I decided on an academic job because, frankly, I still liked being able to play basketball in the middle of the day. I found a job working in a lab with a professor who was studying how genes get turned on and off. Oops! Did I change research areas again? Well, I get bored easily!
Twenty years ago, I had finished my Ph.D. and was working as a postdoctoral fellow. That means I was working in the lab pretty much all day every day. Since I got my Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, chemistry that uses computers not test tubes, you might think I spent my postdoc days in front of a computer. Nope! I was working in a biochemistry lab. Huh? Well, in the late 1980s, there weren’t a lot of jobs for theoretical chemists. Luckily, a science education opens doors, and I had offers to work in all kinds of labs. I liked biochemistry, so I chose that. 
Ever wonder what a scientist does all day? As a scientist, I have a pretty good idea. OK, at least I know what some of my scientist friends and I do. And what I do now is very different from what I did 10 years ago, which was different from what I did 10 years before that. There’s clearly plenty of room for growth and change as a scientist. Becoming a scientist does not mean you need to spend the rest of your life in the lab, but you can if you want. Some of my friends still do just that – working in the lab is their passion. But I, like many other scientists, have taken a career path that uses my scientific training not just to make new discoveries in the laboratory but also in ways you might never have imagined.
RSS Feeds
