Recruiting student in Sciences in Rural Environment: The Air Pollution Workshop
Abstract
The number of students in sciences is declining and thus it is critical to employ a variety of initiatives to familiarize students with various topics in sciences as well as the university environment. In particular, this is a challenge in rural communities where many students do not have easy access to university campuses. Therefore, we have implemented a workshop for junior and senior high school students. We decided to run this workshop on the campus, as this provided not only exposure of the students to scientific and lecturing facilities, but also to life at the university. Holding the workshop on the university campus also enabled faculty and graduate students from several departments to participate, thus allowing for presentation of a wide variety of topics within atmospheric sciences. Our experiences with the continuously growing workshops - from 50 to 180 participating students - will be shared. Participants were students from both rural and urban areas. These workshops, therefore, contributed to our outreach and service to the local community and to students coming from the rural communities of the upper Midwest and Western states. The workshops are organized annually over the spring break, thus ensuring availability of facilities on the campus. The one-day workshop includes a short cycle of presentations focused on the characterization of atmospheric PM and several critical issues connected with it. The expert faculty members from several departments involved in such research present on global warming, air pollution, aerosol formation, measurement using an aircraft, the relation of emissions and energy production, and on modeling of atmospheric processes. This lecture series (each no longer than 15 min) was broken down by fun demonstrations to break the ice and attract students' attention. Following the presentations, students participated in demonstrations performed in the Chemistry Department. The demonstrations included several hands-on activities, starting with simple experiments such as making a cloud in a bottle, chromatography of marker colors, or conversion of dry ice to gas. These "easy" experiments provided explanation of fundamental principles for more scientifically oriented demonstrations including aerosol number concentration measurements, analysis of wood smoke using gas chromatography. The facilitators were mainly graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from the Chemistry Department. These people came from various countries, thus providing a diverse environment strongly appreciated by visiting students. The effectiveness of the workshop was evaluated through a series of pre- and post- surveys providing feedback on organization as well as on learning experiences given to students and teachers. The detailed results from the survey analysis will be reported. In general we were impressed by the current knowledge and interest of students coming to the workshop, suggesting that the decreasing number of students in the sciences may not be due to lack of knowledge or interest. In addition, we consider the workshop to be a success story based on the teachers who are bringing students back every year. The important features of the workshop, such as economical feasibility and details on organization and structure, will be discussed.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFMED41C..07K
- Keywords:
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- 0800 EDUCATION;
- 0805 EDUCATION / Elementary and secondary education;
- 0815 EDUCATION / Informal education