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Four guiding principles for effective trainee-led STEM community engagement through high school outreach

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  • Stefanie Luecke
  • Allison Schiffman
  • Apeksha Singh
  • Helen Huang
  • Barbara Shannon
  • Catera L Wilder

Abstract

To address ongoing academic achievement gap, there is a need for more school-university partnerships promoting early access to STEM education. During summer 2020, members of our institute initiated QBio-EDGE (Quantitative Biology—Empowering Diversity and Growth in Education), an outreach program for high schools in Los Angeles. In the hope of contributing to increasing diversity in academia, QBio-EDGE aims to make STEM education more accessible for students from historically excluded communities by exposing them to scientific research and diverse scientist role models. This program is led by early career researchers (ECRs), i.e., undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers. In our first year, the outreach activities took place during virtual learning, presenting challenges and opportunities within the program development. Here, we provide a practical guide outlining our outreach efforts, key factors we considered in the program development, and hurdles we overcame. Specifically, we describe how we assembled our diverse team, how we established trusting partnerships with participating schools, and how we designed engaging student-centered, problem-based classroom modules on quantitative biology and computational methods applications to understand living systems. We also discuss the importance of increased institutional support. We hope that this may inspire researchers at all career stages to engage with local schools by participating in science outreach, specifically in quantitative and computational fields. We challenge institutions to actively strengthen these efforts.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefanie Luecke & Allison Schiffman & Apeksha Singh & Helen Huang & Barbara Shannon & Catera L Wilder, 2023. "Four guiding principles for effective trainee-led STEM community engagement through high school outreach," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(5), pages 1-13, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1011072
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011072
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    1. Suchinta Arif & Melanie Duc Bo Massey & Natalie Klinard & Julie Charbonneau & Loay Jabre & Ana Barbosa Martins & Danielle Gaitor & Rhiannon Kirton & Catalina Albury & Karma Nanglu, 2021. "Ten simple rules for supporting historically underrepresented students in science," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-16, September.
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