{"id":3792,"date":"2015-08-07T10:41:25","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T14:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2015-08-13T10:45:40","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T14:45:40","slug":"photonics-center-programs-promote-diversity-in-stem-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/2015\/08\/07\/photonics-center-programs-promote-diversity-in-stem-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Photonics Center Programs Promote Diversity in STEM Fields"},"content":{"rendered":"

NSF sponsors summer research by undergrads, high-school teachers<\/h2>\n
\n

\"High<\/p>\n

Lauren Strong (left), with Helen E. Fawcett (GRS\u201997), an ENG research assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is one of 11 college undergrads participating in a new program funded by the National Science Foundation designed to promote diversity in STEM fields. Photos by Cydney Scott.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lauren Strong, a community college student from Pennsylvania, was searching for an internship that would allow her to develop her engineering skills and feel more at home in a lab. Local high school science teacher George DeGregorio was looking for ways to develop his underprivileged students\u2019 interest in science. Both are pursuing their goals thanks to two new summer nanotechnology research programs offered at BU\u2019s Photonics Center<\/a>. The purpose of the programs\u2014both funded by the National Science Foundation<\/a> (NSF)\u2014is to promote diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.<\/p>\n

Strong recalls her first year in college, at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. \u201cI was in computer science, and in my class I was the only woman, and the only black woman, and that really says a lot,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

DeGregorio, a science teacher at East Boston High School, says that most of his students \u201ccouldn\u2019t even imagine themselves being a scientist. There seems to be a disconnect, and I am trying to break those walls down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The purpose of the two programs, NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates<\/a> and NSF Research Experiences for Teachers<\/a>, \u201cis to make authentic research experiences available for underrepresented minority undergraduates or for teachers who work in underresourced schools,\u201d according to Bennett Goldberg, director of BU\u2019s STEM Education Initiatives <\/a>and a principal investigator of the teachers\u2019 program. The programs allow participants \u201cto engage in the deep learning that happens with getting involved in research, the whole cycle of inquiry, because that\u2019s so important to developing the skill sets and minds of students,\u201d says Goldberg, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of physics and a College of Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering and of biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we tried very hard to do this year was focus strongly on diversity among the students that were coming in and to focus on teachers who were serving underprivileged Boston-area schools,\u201d says Photonics Center director Thomas Bifano, an ENG professor of mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n

Strong is one of 11 students enrolled in the undergraduate program, about half of them from colleges that offer little in the way of research opportunities in engineering disciplines such as materials science and biomedical engineering. As a computer science major at Penn, she had felt her odd-woman-out status and found that the predominantly young and male engineers often \u201cdon\u2019t take you as seriously as they should. They live in a bubble and they\u2019re not used to seeing people of color and women doing these things and excelling at these things,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She left school after a year and traveled, working in China for a while as an au pair, before returning to college last year at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania, still planning a career in science or engineering.<\/p>\n

The college \u201cdoes have an engineering program but doesn\u2019t offer any research opportunities,\u201d she says. \u201cSo you\u2019re pretty much just taking their core classes. You\u2019re not really getting any hands-on experience with engineering or photonics or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She discovered the BU program on a Facebook page for women engineers while looking for a summer internship and was surprised when her last-minute application was accepted. Since arriving on campus, she\u2019s been working with graduate students in the lab of Roberto Paiella, an ENG professor of electrical and computer engineering. Her research involves studying different processes to etch a silicon wafer to a depth of only 500 nanometers, just one preparatory step in a complex project to transmit data between chips via laser.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s completely new to me\u2014I never did anything like that,\u201d Strong says. \u201cHere, they kinda just throw you in. I\u2019m like, \u2018Uh, you want me to touch this $100,000-plus equipment?\u2019 I was nervous about breaking everything I touched.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s adjusted quickly, and the work is paying real benefits in skills and experience that will set her apart from other undergraduates, she says. And it will also look good on her transcript when applying to four-year colleges next year and later to graduate school.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s everything,\u201d she says. \u201cComing here, working with the grad students, seeing what they\u2019re doing\u2026gives me ideas for what I want to do. It allows me to focus a lot more on the end goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLauren came into my office the other day and said, \u2018Helen, I\u2019ve been bitten! I\u2019ve been bitten by the research bug!\u2019\u201d says Helen E. Fawcett (GRS\u201997), an ENG research assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Photonics Center manager of operations and technical programs, and co\u2013principal investigator of both NSF programs. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Uh-oh, because you were sure computer science was your major.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"East
\nEast Boston High School science teacher George DeGregorio is engaged in full-time summer research as part of the Research Experiences for Teachers program, another NSF-funded program.<\/em><\/p>\n

A thrilling, occasionally boggling experience<\/h3>\n

The Research Experiences for Teachers program brings teachers from high-need Boston-area high schools and community colleges to BU to work with faculty on research projects. The goal is for them to return to their classroom and convey to their students the excitement created by doing hands-on research.<\/span><\/p>\n

DeGregorio\u2019s parents grew up in East Boston, and he spent a lot of time there as a child. He earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in biology from UMass Amherst and a master\u2019s in science education from Suffolk University. \u201cI wasn\u2019t interested in going corporate,\u201d he says. \u201cTeaching is: I don\u2019t feel like I have a job in the traditional sense. I have a lot of autonomy in the classroom to be myself. I get to make these connections and help kids. It\u2019s a way to do something positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has spent his entire career at East Boston High, where he teaches a variety of life sciences classes. He says he feels a deep connection to the school, which his mother and his aunts and uncles attended. Many of today\u2019s students are from Central American immigrant families, rather than the predominantly Italian families when he was young.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been a great place for me,\u201d DeGregorio says. \u201cThere have been challenges for each of the 17 years I\u2019ve been there. It\u2019s never been a wealthy neighborhood. It\u2019s usually been an immigrant neighborhood.\u201d Almost all of his students qualify for free or reduced price lunches, he says, and for many, perhaps a majority, English is not their primary language.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to move the school forward,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He applied to the BU program instead of teaching summer school and says it\u2019s a thrilling and occasionally boggling experience: \u201cYou\u2019re working in real labs that are producing real scientific papers that are influencing industry. Other projects are sprouting from the ones they\u2019ve got going here. It\u2019s the real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeGregorio has spent the summer working with grad students in Bifano\u2019s lab, setting up a high-tech optical system that among other things can look below the surface of live tissue at the cellular level. As part of his research, he found himself at one point dispatched to the Medical Campus to pick up some nematodes that had been genetically engineered so their neurons fluoresce. \u201cThere\u2019s science fiction coming to life in here,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

But his goals for the summer are serious and long-term. \u201cWhatever connections can be made,\u201d he says, \u201cthey can help students perceive themselves in science, number one, in college, number two, and at a prestigious institution like BU, number three.\u201d<\/p>\n

The programs have been interwoven to a degree. The undergrad program runs from June 8 to August 14, the teacher program from July 6 to August 14. In most cases the arriving teachers were partnered with the undergraduates, who had already found their feet at BU, a little bit of a role reversal. \u201cI worried about it, especially in my lab,\u201d says Xin Zhang, an ENG professor of mechanical engineering and co\u2013principal investigator of the undergraduate program. \u201cTurned out I was thrilled to see them happily and professionally working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Photonics Center will make an ongoing effort to help both groups transfer their summer\u2019s experiences back to their classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to say in August, \u2018Bye! Great knowing you! See ya!\u2019 We\u2019re going to keep in touch with these students, help them out for grad school,\u201d says Fawcett. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to say to the teachers, \u2018Great, have fun putting that in your classroom!\u2019 The expectation is we are creating a community of nanontechnology STEM teachers, and each year we\u2019re going to have a STEM seminar\u2026and grow that community.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a concerted effort to provide a well-rounded experience for both the undergraduates, who live on campus, and the teachers, including brown-bag lunches on topics from the fundamentals of photonics to getting into grad school, as well as field trips to the Museum of Science and the Freedom Trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very strong sense in this community of the value of STEM education, the value of education in general,\u201d Bifano says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a do-good thing just to do good; it\u2019s a thing that we more or less have built into the cloth of the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author,\u00a0Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NSF sponsors summer research by undergrads, high-school teachers Lauren Strong (left), with Helen E. Fawcett (GRS\u201997), an ENG research assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is one of 11 college undergrads participating in a new program funded by the National Science Foundation designed to promote diversity in STEM fields. Photos by Cydney Scott. Lauren Strong, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[34,108,88,109,142,126,13,40,141,93,5,65,140,39,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3797,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions\/3797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/federal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}