Hello and welcome and welcome to the Transition Points podcast and blog series. My name is Cindy and I'm a researcher and project manager at the [Griffin] Museum of Science and Industry. At the Museum, my work is focused on a research study we call the Developing YOUth! Project. This project is a longitudinal study following youth from our legacy teen program here at the Museum. That teen program was called, the Science Minors and Achievers. You may hear me refer to some of our participants as Achievers sometimes, and they refer to themselves this way as well.

As of this year, 2023, we are entering our eighth year in the study. The last time we interviewed participants for the qualitative component of the study however, was in 2021.

One of the goals of the Museum is to equip young people with skills that will prepare them for college and other post-secondary pursuits. In this episode we're going to touch on how the skills promoted in the program, the Science Minors and Achievers, may have helped youths, according to some of our participants' experiences.

At [Griffin] MSI

A major feature of the Science Minors and Achievers program was that it was multi-leveled or tiered. In talking to our participants, we learned that the tiered design of the program helped to provide structure, support, and skill-building that felt appropriate at each level of their development. Younger teens in the program started in the "Science Minors," where they attended more formal science lessons. This provided them with opportunities to develop and refine the skills they'd need later in the program. After they completed this initial portion of the program, they entered a training period before becoming a "Science Achiever."

As a "Science Achiever," our teens learned how to teach science lessons to Museum guests. This included doing demonstrations and experiments each Saturday on the Museum floor. Achievers attended science lessons and were able to sign up for their choice of STEM modules to teach to guests.

I talked to Ana, who at the time, was getting ready to move out of state to pursue her Master of Science in Data Analytics. She touched on her time in the two parts of the program.

I think the museum kind of pushed me starting out with Minors to do the kind of get out of my shell and stop being so shy and just kind of learn how to be confident and presenting to people. And so that was really fun. And also getting to explore the museum. That was that was cool experience. And then I got to Achievers and got to do even more things with youth development kind of learning life skills. That'd be important to move into the future, like how to interview by resumes. I to take care of your finances, how to interact with people and those kinds of skills too um, and then also additionally doing like more science type of experiments.

Ana went on to tell me more about the impact she felt the program had on her as a person. I'll touch a little bit on this in our episode on how participants felt about staff in the program and you'll hear more from Ana then.

Some of the responsibilities Achievers had were picking up their materials, performing experiments or doing demonstrations on the floor, talking to guests and answering their questions, and then making sure all of their materials were returned to storage. This meant Achievers had name badges and keycards so they could access parts of the Museum meant for staff and employees. The more experienced teens in the program expressed that they appreciated the freedom of being able to access more of the Museum and to exercise some autonomy.

Overall, they acknowledged that the Science Minors portion of the program helped to build their science knowledge and the different ways science could be taught; the Science Achievers portion of the program, then, helped to build up their public speaking skills and helped them to think critically about how to effectively communicate complex subjects by breaking them down into easily understood parts. For some participants, this definitely helped them in college.

In college

Many of the Achievers we interviewed continued to credit the program for how it prepared them for success in college and in their careers. They felt that many of the skills they developed and were able to practice in the program set them apart from their colleagues. One of our participants, Kevin (remember, that's a pseudonym), doesn't work in a traditional STEM career, but told us he still thinks like a scientist in his everyday life.

While Kevin has always had a strong interest in STEM subjects, he was especially excited about the social and communal aspect of doing science for guests on the Museum floor. For Kevin and a lot of our other participants, being an "Achiever" meant being able to both think like a scientist and teach science to others in the Museum community. Kevin described realizing that this set of skills was special and unique.

In college, when working on group projects with other students or in his current job working with colleagues and clients, Kevin realized that others don't necessarily know how to break down complex ideas in order to better understand them. When we spoke to him last, he had recently been promoted. He talked about how his new job was more complicated. He said,

So there's a little bit more math and a little more-a lot more requirements, rather. But it's the same type of organizational logical thinking. Which is something that I definitely appreciate... my experience with the scientific process or, just because it's logic and reasoning and I'm realizing now that that is a much rarer trait in the world than I had hoped. I guess as I mature, I'm realizing it's a much more important thing for us to educate which is why I like, I kind of took the Achievers program for granted because they selected a bunch of smart kids that were really good at figuring things out.

So when I got to the real world, I was like, wow, not everyone's an Achiever.

I thought that was an interesting way of putting it, "not everyone's an Achiever."

While Kevin considered himself a natural public speaker, many of the participants in the teen program did not. One participant, Rex (again, that's a pseudonym) talked to us about how important he felt the public speaking component of the program was. He said,

I think a lot of the times, maybe it could be other things like my upbringing, or my personality or whatnot. But one of the things that we were kind of always taught in Science Achievers, was to never give people like, you can of course, give people the answer, but you kind of want to help people come to the answer themselves. Even now, today in my job, I don't like... I've sneezed on my program subject matter experts that work on my program that had been there for 20 years. I will never know their knowledge level. And like, I've got engineers that have worked on the program for five years. And I know, I'll never know their knowledge level--I'll never have their knowledge level. But by asking them questions, and having them come to a certain level of understanding on their own, I can help them answer their questions.

So I think that's a key thing that I've kind of noticed. And also even looking at some other people my own age, they never really had those opportunities to get up and present in front of people, they never really had those opportunities to go and teach people things. And I think that the Science Achievers program was kind of my opportunity to get that foundational knowledge at you know, that 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-year-old range of being able to present things to people in an easily understood way. And since I had that opportunity, and other people I see didn't have that opportunity, I kind of credit the Achievers program with kind of giving me that ability.

...

I think I could have gotten that in college, because I know, at least in my school, since we're so close to industry, ... my school kind of focused on those things a little bit more. And so in a lot of my engineering classes, and then when I went to the business side, they always kind of had like a speaking component or presentation component or like writing component to kind of give some of those other skills to areas that might not necessarily have had them. And so I think I could have gotten those skills in college. But since I think I went into college with those skills, I was able to grow those skills beyond where I would have been at if I wouldn't have had it at those more foundational years.

Rex went into more detail later on the differences he saw in the people he met in the program versus the people he knew in other parts of his life. You'll hear more from Rex in our episode on the positive and inclusive peer culture fostered in the program.

Implications

After all of our interviews and follow up interviews, it's clear that our participants in the Science Minors and Achievers program gained skills they felt were, not only useful to them in school or work, but also set them apart from others. Like Kevin said, "Not everyone's an Achiever." These included skills we all think of when we think of a Scientist, such as critical thinking, logic, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. Additionally, it was clear in our interviews with participants that they valued the public speaking skills and science communication skills (that is, being able to break down complex ideas into easily understood concepts) that they were able to develop at the Museum.

The program's multilevel design helped participants build these skills by being responsive to their developmental needs. By building a foundation of confidence in their science knowledge first; then allowing them to practice and communicate that knowledge to the Museum community as science educators.

Up Next

In our episode on Meaningful Opportunities, we'll talk a little bit more about how our participants felt they were able to use science education to impact their communities.

Another episodes in this series, focuses on how participants felt staff in the program contributed to their supportive community.

Our episode on the positive peer culture facilitated in the program details how participants felt about their fellow Achievers and the impact this had on their feelings of support in the program. In that episode, we also discuss how the lack of a positive peer culture some of our participants experienced while in college impacted them. In particular, this episode focuses on one of our Black, Woman-identifying participants, who we call Emma.

In our episode on belonging, we discuss more broadly, a sense of belonging to communities inside and outside of the Museum. In that episode we dig deeper into how feeling a sense of belonging to communities, or rather, feeling the absence of this, affected some of our Black Women-identifying participants in particular. We focused on these participants because of the stark contrast between their experiences in college, and the experiences our participants described while in the Science Minors and Achievers program.