Hello and welcome! My name is Cindy and I'm a researcher and project manager at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. You're listening to an episode of our series, "Transition Points: Snapshots of a STEM Journey." "Transition Points" is a series of podcasts, briefs, and blog posts that we've created in order to share some of the insights from our longitudinal study, The Developing YOUth! Project. This project follows alumni from our legacy teen program here at the Museum. That teen program was called the Science Minors and Achievers.

The project is mixed methods and has a quantitative component which includes our annual surveys, and a qualitative component. The qualitative methods we used include participant observations from when the teens were still in the program as well as in-depth interviews we've conducted with some participants over the years. We last interviewed our participants during the summer of 2021. Some of them were finishing up college, some were starting their careers, and some were pursuing graduate school. For a few more details about the project and series overall, take a listen to our introductory episode.

A major feature of the Science Minors and Achievers program is to get teens to actively engage with the community through science. In this episode we're going to talk about how participants felt about community engagement through STEM education and how these experiences may have impacted their academic and career choices after they left the program.

At Griffin MSI

When talking to them about their experience with learning Science, our participants often mentioned the unique approach at the Museum and how it contrasted with how they learned Science in school. This approach made STEM fun and interesting, and therefore approachable. The Science Minors and Achievers program was designed to focus, not only on educating teens on STEM topics, but also on how STEM education can go beyond what they saw in their formal learning environments.

Teens were given opportunities to take on roles as leaders, collaborators, and educators. Some major features of the program were the science experiments and other STEM-related demonstrations teens presented to Museum guests. We talked more about this in our episode on skill building for success.

Teens in the program were educated, trained, and tested on a module of their choice. Once they passed, they could train other teens in the program, as well as lead those modules when doing demonstrations on the floor. Our participants felt that the opportunity to teach STEM topics in this way was very meaningful to them. It allowed them to be responsible for inspiring curiosity and awe in others. One of our participants talked about exactly this.

Rex who at the time of our interview had studied structural engineering before finishing his undergraduate degree in finance through the school of business, talked about his memories of just this:

I definitely think, you know, with Science Achievers, one of the things that I really loved the most was presenting science material on the museum floor. And you know, getting to talk with guests from different countries and different nationalities in different places in the world, and different backgrounds and teaching them cool things about science that you wouldn't normally get to talk about, you know, my favorite thing when I, we had kind of, like 10 or so different activities that we could go teach. And I always pick the one that was about scents and the nose, because I just thought it was so cool, because like you use your nose every day, and who would have thought that your nose can detect, you know, millions of different types of scents. And so that was my favorite one, because, for me, I loved it, because you could teach someone, something that they use every single day, but more give them more understanding and better understanding of what goes into it. And so for me, I really like to teach people like the why or the how, or the what behind something, you know, there's, there's always surface level information that a lot of people know, but to kind of give them some additional information can really kind of, you know, open their eyes to other things and be like, 'Oh, well, you know, if your nose can do that, you know, I wonder what this can do or what that can do.' And so, like, for me, I really liked, you know, getting to kind of inspire people to go look more.

In College

After graduating from the program, our participants continued to consider the different ways they could impact their communities. In many instances, our participants felt their time in the Science Minors and Achievers program contributed to their choices to focus on or even center community impact. Andy talked about realizing this even more so once he got to college:

ANDY: I think that was kind of like, a big thing where, like, being at the museum, we kind of, like learn that, that, you know, we have these passions, and you know, stem isn't just about, you know, doing all these cool sciency things, it's also about giving back to your community and inspiring the next generation of leaders to do the same thing.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel like while you're in the science minors and achievers programs at the museum that you realized that that's what the point of it was?

ANDY: Yes, but it definitely dawned on me more in college. I remember, like, being in my college essays being like, yeah, like, I wanted to come to Griffin MSI, because I wanted to, you know, like, teach, you know, and also learn about cool science concepts and do really cool things like 3d printers, and like,...

In college, like when I was more separated from that fact, of, I'm just doing STEM to basically make money. That's when I kind of realized that there was a whole... that--I knew, but that's why I fully completely realized that the whole point of this, and the way that, you know, [STAFF 1] and [STAFF 2] and [STAFF 3] are super impactful in my life was that's that instilling that specific value of utilizing STEM in a way that advances the causes that you believe in, and whether it's, you know, helping other people get into STEM or reducing inequalities in society, whether it's the politics or you know, increasing the access to information in local newspapers and public interest technology. That's the big takeaway.

Some participants chose to make an impact on their communities by looking for more formal opportunities through their professional careers. Floriana is currently pursuing a master's in education and has plans for becoming a high school science teacher. She told me that she was working on her undergraduate degree in Biology when the COVID-19 pandemic started. The misinformation and misunderstanding of information around the pandemic were factors in her decision to pursue science through education.

"So it was during those experiences that made me think, 'Oh, when is the time that I got interested in science and I got comfortable in science?' And that was in school, in high school. And that's where I was like, 'Oh, I could be a teacher.'

[...] There is such a fundamental lack of science literacy and so many people are just uncomfortable with science. They're like, 'Ah, this is a lot of scary long words.' It was also Griffin MSI's program, that it was just like, 'hey, scientists aren't just old white men, you know, in lab coats, [scientists can be] everyone.'"

Meanwhile others hoped to make an impact by teaching or tutoring in STEM at local schools, churches, or community centers.

Implications

On its surface, the SMA program taught STEM subjects to teens in a fun and interesting way. A major goal of the program was to prepare its teens for college. However, a less obvious outcome was its instilling the value of community engagement through STEM education. Perhaps this outcome exists in subtlety because, well, it's sort of built into what it means to be a science museum-we literally are trying to engage with our communities through Science and STEM education every day. It is unsurprising then, that an outcome of a teen program here might be that those very teens might someday want to keep engaging with the community, through Science and STEM education, whichever ones they end up considering theirs

Up Next

While this episode touches on how the meaningful opportunities at the Museum helped to shape teens' ideas and actions around community and STEM engagement, our episode on skill building for success, focuses more on how other features of the program helped participants to build skills that set them apart from their peers in college or in their careers.

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 this 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.

Research Brief #2 (PDF)