I had
an eye-opening conversation last year with a high school student who sat next
to me at the awards banquet for a state-level high school science competition.
He asked me what my daughter’s project had been on, and, when I responded
that Carolyn had done a geology project, his ingenuous response was a polite
but puzzled, “Why would someone want to do a geology project? There aren’t
any interesting questions in geology.” Hmmm…..
Is this student’s viewpoint unique, or are our brightest and most motivated
high school students failing to discover that geology is full of compelling
research questions? Consider that in the past 10 years of the prestigious national
Intel Science Talent Search, only two of the top-10 finalists had geoscience
projects (Bruce Haggerty in 1995 and Carolyn Tewksbury in 2003). By contrast,
25 of the top-10 finalists were in the biosciences. Furthermore, in the past
eight years, only one student with a project in the geosciences has won one
of the three top prizes given annually at the Intel International Science and
Engineering Fair (Sarah Langberg in 2004). By comparison, the biosciences and
physics have accounted for fully half of the top prizes. And, anyone who has
judged science fairs at any level can tell you not only that geoscience projects
are rare, but also that the top students working with mentors who are professional
scientists rarely have geoscience projects.
By many measures, then, disappointingly few high school students who are looking
for research projects are drawn to geoscience questions. We know that there
are plenty of interesting questions in the geosciences. Why do so few of our
best and most motivated high school students become involved in geoscience research?
Is the well-known lack of exposure to earth science courses in the pre-college
curriculum a contributing factor? Let’s look at New York State, where earth
science courses have been well-established for half a century through the state’s
Regents system and where roughly 90 percent of students who have graduated with
Regents diplomas have taken earth science. More than one-third of the Intel
Science Talent Search semifinalists and finalists over the past several decades
have come from New York State, but very few of those students have done geoscience
projects despite having taken Regents earth science. So, the simple answer —
that many students don’t encounter earth science courses in school —
is clearly not the whole answer.
I spoke recently with Melanie Krieger, president of the Long Island Science
and Engineering Fair, and with Len Behr, who is affiliated with the upstate
New York program Science Research in the High Schools. Both Krieger and Behr
stressed that most high school teachers have neither the time nor the resources
to mentor students interested in doing significant science research and that
professional scientists play a crucial role as mentors for students in their
programs.
Behr indicated that high school teachers in their program teach a general course
in science research and help students find mentors for research projects. Most
of the high school teachers involved are biology teachers, and students are
typically 10th graders enrolled in biology at the time they start the program.
Predictably, mentors and projects are heavily skewed toward the biosciences.
Krieger told me that virtually all of the 400 students who participate annually
in the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair have mentors and that she remembers
only a handful of geoscientists among the group of mentors over the past 20
years. Predictably, geoscience projects are few and far between.
So, what’s the message? We’re missing the boat! We need more people
like Mike Perfit at the University of Florida, who mentored 2004 Intel Young
Scientist Sarah Langberg, and Vicki Hansen of the University of Minnesota, Duluth,
who mentored 2003 Intel Science Talent Search Finalist Carolyn Tewksbury. By
connecting with young scientists, we can increase the number of top students
entering our field and conducting geoscience research (the topic of this issue
of Geotimes) at an early age. The quality of our college and university faculty
and students, and the health of our departments, ultimately starts at the pre-college
level.
I urge all of you to go to your local schools, share your passion for the geosciences,
take the time to mentor a student or two, volunteer to judge at local, regional
and international science competitions, and consider establishing a prize at
your local or regional fair to recognize an outstanding young geoscience researcher.
You can find good advice on mentoring students for high school research projects
and competitions online at www.sciserv.org/isef/teachers,
www.jshs.org/getinvolved.html
and www.albany.edu/rshs,
or you can e-mail me at btewksbu@hamilton.edu
for advice on how to get started. Let’s turn the tide!
Barbara Tewksbury
Geotimes Guest Editor and AGI President
Department of Geology, Hamilton College,
Clinton, N.Y.
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