OPENING DOORS WITH INFORMAL SCIENCE - EXPOSURE AND ACCESS FOR OUR UNDERSERVED STUDENTS

As it has become apparent that there is a need to broaden the emphasis of science education and ensure that every student achieves a level o f science literacy, science educators face the challenge of addressing new audiences that are not always well-served by traditional presenta tions of scientific material. The challenge of presenting agricultural science to urban African American students typifies a scenario that n ecessitates devising new approaches to teach people who were previousl y overlooked or even ignored by the scientific community. The Young Sc holars Program at The Ohio State University (OSU) is a 6-year pre-coll egiate intervention program designed to prepare academically talented, economically disadvantaged minority students for college education. T his novel outreach program was developed with the primary intention of enhancing the educational background of all of these young people by increasing their agricultural literacy. A secondary goal lay in the ho pe that some of these students might be enticed to consider the possib ility of collegiate study in agricultural fields, thus infusing some m uch needed racial/ethnic diversity into the College of Food, Agricultu re, and Environmental Sciences' student population. To address anticip ated disinterest on the part of the students, an informal approach des igned to emphasize the relevance, breadth, technical sophistication, a nd aesthetic components of agricultural science was devised. Students were taken on educational field trips to various college departments a s part of an academic program during summer visits to the OSU. Efforts were made to use nontraditional (all women and men of color) scientis ts as many of the presenters to break down the stereotypical notion th at only white males do science. Deliberate educational strategies were employed to enhance the educative aspects of the visits. A science/wr iting exercise served the dual purpose of prompting student reflection as well as being the evaluation instrument to assess the efficacy of the program. The success of this effort to reshape the traditional pre sentation of agriculture was demonstrated in much of the testimony of the students as well as the verbal and written observations of the adu lts involved. The demonstrable success of this project documents the p ossibility of an initiative addressing the dual challenge of opening t he doors of science while simultaneously cultivating the interest of h istorically underrepresented people in nontraditional subject areas. T his research further supports the idea that an informal approach to sc ience education can be a particularly effective intervention strategy for reaching out to underserved students. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.