By Ryan Downs
Staff Writer
Hands-on science education is something that younger kids are excited by, and anyone who was once a kid understands why. The CSUSM STEM program aims to inspire that excitement.
It’s fair to say that to some degree, all of us are fascinated by science. However, children are often very interested participants in courses that involve science. Fortunately, a collection of students and teachers have come together to form STEM, a program that offers hands-on science education to kids in schools who cannot make time for it during regular class hours. The STEM Program operates several times a week at San Marcos Elementary and Twin Oaks Elementary shortly after classes end.
The program has around 200 undergraduate students volunteering in total.
Dr. Bianca Mothe and the Office of Community Service Learning (OCSL) founded the program two years ago in response to complaints by parents that children were not learning enough science in elementary school classrooms. This was a result of the math and language-oriented legislation put forth by No Child Left Behind in 2002. Mothe initially implemented the program at Twin Oaks Elementary, with most of the workforce consisting of volunteers from CSUSM that were primarily majoring in science and teaching.
Colleen Lopez, one of the program coordinators, is incredibly enthusiastic about its effects, which she notes goes far beyond just education.
“We’re not looking for them to suddenly ace all their tests. We’re just trying to inspire them to want to enjoy it and realize that science isn’t so scary,” Lopez said. “Down the road, we may have the next Einstein because in class they had an explosion. It’s mainly just to inspire these kids to view science in a positive manner.”
Lopez’s efforts seem to be successful; one classroom in particular was crowded with young students marveling at the smoke coming off of dry ice, while another classroom saw its students staring at a model of the human heart.
But the people who truly make the program work are the students who become involved in it and volunteer their time. Mothe has been able to recruit over 100 students from STEM Programs at CSUSM. These undergrads then worked together to form 54 different lesson plans to be presented in six weeks. During this time, they will teach over 780 students at the two schools many scientific topics including biology, crystallography and physics.
For the future, the people at the program are ambitious. In the short term, the hope is that, with the assistance of grants from philanthropic organizations, the program can expand to other schools, and hopefully branch out to other subjects. In the meantime, continued assistance from students on campus interested in science and teaching is always welcome.