How Do High School Students Respond to Opportunities to Collaborate with Authentic Scientific Researchers in At-Risk Environments?

At-risk students experience higher than normal rates of absenteeism as well as other traumatic experiences which can interfere with the learning process. We have worked to engage a group of students at Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, NJ, in science via a citizen science approach. Their project involved collecting and processing data related to activities of extracellular enzymes in diverse freshwater environments during a 3-day stay at Pocono Environmental Education Center, a residential environmental education center in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. So far, informal assessments of student outcome suggest that the experience results in students with higher interest in technical subject matter and higher self-confidence in their ability to become professional scientists or engineers. In the future, we plan more formal study of student outcomes using methods outlined in this presentation.