HR: 17:30h
AN: ED32E-07    [PDF]
TI: Education and Outreach Programs Offered by the Center for High Pressure Research and the Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences
AU: * Richard, G A
EM: Glenn.Richard@sunysb.edu
AF: Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2100 United States
AB: Major research facilities and organizations provide an effective venue for developing partnerships with educational organizations in order to offer a wide variety of educational programs, because they constitute a base where the culture of scientific investigation can flourish. The Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences (COMPRES) conducts education and outreach programs through the Earth Science Educational Resource Center (ESERC), in partnership with other groups that offer research and education programs. ESERC initiated its development of education programs in 1994 under the administration of the Center for High Pressure Research (CHiPR), which was funded as a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center from 1991 to 2002. Programs developed during ESERC's association with CHiPR and COMPRES have targeted a wide range of audiences, including pre-K, K-12 students and teachers, undergraduates, and graduate students. Since 1995, ESERC has offered inquiry-based programs to Project WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) students at a high school and undergraduate level. Activities have included projects that investigated earthquakes, high pressure mineral physics, and local geology. Through a practicum known as Project Java, undergraduate computer science students have developed interactive instructional tools for several of these activities. For K-12 teachers, a course on Long Island geology is offered each fall, which includes an examination of the role that processes in the Earth's interior have played in the geologic history of the region. ESERC has worked with Stony Brook's Department of Geosciences faculty to offer courses on natural hazards, computer modeling, and field geology to undergraduate students, and on computer programming for graduate students. Each summer, a four-week residential college-level environmental geology course is offered to rising tenth graders from the Brentwood, New York schools in partnership with Stony Brook's Department of Technology and Society. During the academic year, a college-level Earth science course is offered to tenth graders from Sayville, New York. In both programs, students conduct research projects as one of their primary responsibilities. In collaboration with the Museum of Long Island Natural Sciences on the Stony Brook campus, two programs have been developed that enable visiting K-12 school classes to investigate earthquakes and phenomena that operate in the Earth's deep interior. From 1997 to 1999, the weekly activity-based Science Enrichment for the Early Years (SEEY) program, focusing on common Earth materials and fundamental Earth processes, was conducted at a local pre-K school. Since 2002, ESERC has worked with the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) to organize the Skills Workshops for their Annual Meeting and with EarthScope for the development of their Education and Outreach Program Plan. Future education programs and tools developed through COMPRES partnerships will place an increased emphasis on deep Earth materials and phenomena.
DE: 3999 General or miscellaneous
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting