Expanding Your Horizons

EXPERIENCE BERKELEY. Through a program sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, high school students get an up-close look at research and life in the College, meeting with current students and learning from professors such as chemical engineering professor Alex Bell.

Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) also works with young women and encourages them to take math and science courses in high school, part of its effort to increase the number of women in science and engineering fields. Sponsored by the nonprofit Math/Science Network, based at Mills College in Oakland, EYH offers the opportunity for girls to discover the excitement of scientific discovery and the career opportunities in science and math-related fields like computer technology, engineering and medicine. College members of Iota Sigma Pi, the national honor society for women in chemistry, consistently volunteer at the annual EYH event.

On a chilly March morning, Allison Caster, a graduate student in chemistry, guided middle-school girls through numerous experiments in the “Colorful Chemistry” session of EYH. “The girls burned metal salts to get great colors and to learn about the electromagnetic spectrum,” Caster said. “It was a blast.” In the session, participants do hands-on reactions, making polymers and “super” bouncy balls, distinguishing chemical compounds by the colors that they give off in a fire, flash freezing compounds and ending the session by “making liquid-nitrogen ice cream, which is always the most popular part of the program,” said Caster.

The day includes a talk encouraging girls to persist in mathematics and science courses, and two varieties of workshops: participating in experiments and listening to role models discuss what their jobs involve on a daily basis. This was Deborah Michiko Aruguete’s second year to volunteer at the event. “I think it’s important for people to be exposed to science at an early age,” said Aruguete, a chemistry graduate student. “Sometimes small things can influence what a student will ultimately study. Plus the event is a lot of fun, and the girls all enjoy the experiments. I’ll definitely do it again.”

Caster agreed, noting that the event helps reinforce the idea that science is cool, especially at an age when many girls seem to lose interest in science and math. “I think that seeing us and having us as role models might inspire them to take science courses and maybe even have science careers, although the girls really think they are there to have fun.” And with super-cold homemade ice cream at the end, who can blame them! Outreach programs offer young women the chance to see successful women chemists as role models and, it is hoped, ignite an interest to follow in their footsteps.

BGESS

Many members of the Black Graduate Engineering and Science Student group hope to inspire a similar curiosity about science by working with high school students from across the Bay Area. After two months of mentoring and advising by college students, the advisees took part in the ninth annual BGESS-sponsored Science Fair. Seventy high school students sat in the Wozniak Lounge in Soda Hall on Cal Day, waiting for the winners to be announced. Twenty-five projects had been judged, and though the winning projects were eventually announced—“What Plant Transpires the Most?” and “Aviation”—in reality, all of the participants are winners. “Some of the schools that we targeted did not have good facilities and the students were lacking in role models and science leadership,” said Nerayo Teclemariam, a chemical engineering graduate student. “We went in knowing that we had our work cut out for us, but the students were exceptionally bright and motivated, coming up with projects on their own, testing out their hypotheses. It was a great experience.”

BGESS hosts the annual science fair in hopes of sparking an interest in science and engineering in students from underrepresented minorities. BGESS also helped found the Summer Undergraduate Program in Engineering Research at Berkeley (SUPERB), which offers research opportunities to outstanding engineering students to prepare them for graduate school. The number of black students in engineering and science at Berkeley is quite low, with 23 enrolled in the college—12 as undergraduates and 11 in the two graduate programs, so there is room for improvement.

Increasing the number of underrepresented students at Berkeley is a main concern of Chancellor Birgeneau, whose vision for Berkeley embraces the themes of leadership, connection, and inclusion. On the entire campus, only 108 African American students enrolled as freshmen this year, down from 260 in 1997, the year before Proposition 209 went into effect. Birgeneau has said he won’t defy Proposition 209—a voter-passed initiative that banned affirmative action in education—but instead will work within the system to change the admissions picture, including speaking out on the issue. “Inclusion covers financial as well as social, cultural and religious diversity. ...It is self-evident that we can neither achieve true excellence here at the University of California nor fulfill our public mission unless we access fully the entire talent pool,” Birgeneau said at his recent inauguration.

For more information:

Community Resources for Science: http://www.crscience.org/

College Scholars Program: http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/ugrad_info/cocsp/

Stiles Hall: http://www.stileshall.org/

BGESS: http://bgess.berkeley.edu/

Birgeneau’s inauguration: http://cio.chance.berkeley.edu/chancellor/