UWT makes math, science fun for teens
Jeffery Terry held a ribbed tan canister and carefully poured its contents onto the waiting palms of curious kids. He didn’t mind that the substance he held was about minus-340 degrees Fahrenheit. Neither did the students with the outstretched hands.
They were getting a science lesson. And it was cool.
“It’s crazy. It hits the boiling point, and it evaporates,” said Terry, a senior at Clover Park High School.
He was right. Practically before the supercold substance touched flesh, it boiled into steam, dissipating into a fascinating fog. It didn’t hurt a bit.
A few minutes earlier, students gathered around a makeshift outdoor kitchen, using several usual ingredients – and the unusual liquid nitrogen – to make ice cream.
“It’s delicious!” Foss High School senior Michael Birge declared.
It’s also an effective way to get kids engaged in learning science. Call it an easy-to-swallow education.
Terry and Birge are among about 120 seventh- through 12th-graders wrapping up a four-week summer school at the University of Washington Tacoma this week.
The Math+Science+Leadership Program takes South Sound students who historically might not perform well in those disciplines and immerses them in six summers of intensive study, said program coordinator Adrienne Ione. There’s also a strong community service component. And along the way, the older students are schooled in applying for scholarships and filling out college admission applications.
They’ve walked around town sketching buildings so they could design urban villages on computers; learned about physics by using household items to create mini-explosions in Ziploc bags; tinctured chemicals with color using one substance, then returned the liquid to a clear state in acid-and-base chemistry experiments; and participated in dozens of other hands-on lessons.
Like similar programs across the nation, the aim is to create and fill a pipeline of math/science/tech-savvy students who’ll eventually become physicians, scientists, engineers, leaders and problem-solvers.
“They learn to be global citizens, how to fit into not just the United States but the world,” instructor Justine Valdez said.
The 160-hour summer session times six years equals 960 hours of extra school for those who stick with the program. That’s the equivalent of almost an additional year of classes for some kids.
Students are selected for the extra education based on three criteria, Ione said.
• First-generation college prospects: No one in the student’s immediate family has earned a four-year degree. The students who enter the program are more likely to decide on college after high school, Ione said.
• Belongs to a group underrepresented in math and science disciplines: Historically this includes girls and kids from certain socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Member of a low-income family: This can include kids who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, a common indicator of poverty.
Four of the students who began the program in its inaugural session five years ago are still with it and entering their senior years of high school – just 12 months away from college.
Birge, one of those pioneers, praised the experience as he stood on the sun-splashed UWT campus one recent morning, juggling an empty Styrofoam bowl containing the dregs of his vanilla-ice-cream-with-chocolate-sauce experiment.
“I’ve learned how to program robots. I’ve learned how to use programs like SketchUp (a 3-D modeling software that allows users to create buildings). I’ve done a lot of community service,” he said.
Securing “No dumping” stickers on storm drains, repairing senior citizens’ homes and painting houses for low-income residents taught him the value of community service, Birge added.
And, oh, by the way, if you’re mathematically challenged, don’t engage Birge in any numbers contests; he can solve quadratic equations and knows other math formulas most adults likely have forgotten.
Ione provides these statistics attesting to the success of the program:
• Seventy-seven percent of the students raised their math grade by at least one letter from the summer of 2007 to the fall of 2007. A student who might have posted a 2.7, or B-minus, in math in the spring of 2007, for example, earned at least a 3.0, or solid B, last fall, she said
• Ninety-four percent said their interest increased in the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
• One-quarter of the kids who began the program five years ago remain in it this summer. That’s four of the initial core group of students admitted in 2003.
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Madrigal, an incoming sophomore at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School, was one of about two dozen students who bent over storm drains Tuesday, affixing stickers printed with salmon to warn potential polluters that what they wash off their yards and driveways will wind up in Commencement Bay.
Madrigal, who’s been in the program for three years, says her grades improved from a mixture of A’s and B’s to five A’s and one A-minus last spring at McIlvaigh Middle School.
“They teach me advanced stuff,” she said. “So when I get ready for school, I already know what I’ll be learning. There was stuff on the math WASL that they had showed us in MSL.”
Of the sticker-gluing excursion to Tacoma’s East Side, she said: “It teaches us to take care of the community, because if we don’t take care of the community, then no one else will.”
Madrigal’s mother, Teresa, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico, said Wednesday that her once-shy daughter is blossoming in the program, not only learning academic subjects but also sharpening her language skills. That, in turn, helps Teresa Madrigal improve her English, the mother said.
Mike Rhubright, a senior environmental specialist for the City of Tacoma, likes the program, too.
The stickers kids put on storm drains through a partnership with Citizens for a Healthy Bay are part of an important environmental program for the city, he said.
Birge thinks his six summers of learning prepared him well for a future he hopes will include college – perhaps at the University of Washington – and the study of medicine.
Terry, the Clover Park senior, is thinking about a career in engineering.
The UWT program added up to greater success in high school and a better road to adulthood, he said.
“I kind of dug in, and it helped me with all the little things that I was missing” in various subjects, he said.
Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659
