This is our 11th summer doing the project. We are hoping to scale the project to other research institutions in the New York metro area and the Lower Hudson Valley. Some key components of the program in terms of strategy include: getting the students to do authentic research that follow rigorous data protocols, working and learning in teams, having multiple layers of mentors, being in a research environment like Lamont-Doherty where they get to not only see how other scientists do research but they can also feel a sense of belonging there themselves, and providing them opportunities to engage in science throughout the academic year with presentations at professional science meetings and coursework. 

We envision our impact with our INCLUDES pilot to be the creation of about 12 more research sites just like ours that operate in clusters and utilize different partners (i.e. research institution, informal learning organization, private foundation, and a school network). We will evaluate our success based on whether or not we have a pilot program in place at one or more of our research partner organizations by the end of the INCLUDES pilot grant. We will also evaluate our success by looking at how we are able to develop a common agenda, shared metrics, and implementation plans between the 50+ individuals from various organizations who are involved in this process with us. 

Thanks for the clear reply as to how you will measure your success of the INCLUDES pilot. I think it is  interesting to evaluate your success in developing common metrics, a common agenda and implementation plan between partners. That will give you a lot of information as to the ease and challenges of scaling this project up to 12 more research sites. It sounds like you have data in hand that the participants in your project benefit from participating. Will be interesting to see if sites that adapt or replicate your program can achieve similar results. A very interesting project!

Hi Joni -- in our experience, useful tracking data on the participants of programs such as these take several years, at least, to compile.  Thus our focus during the INCLUDES funding period per se is on process metrics and program implementations.  In the longer run, we are working with partners in the Science Research Mentoring Consortium (an project that came out of an American Museum of Natural History / Pinkerton Foundation partnership) to establish a set of metrics, including longitudinal tracking of participants.  Those tools, which SRMC is applying to their participating programs, will be adapted to whichever programs in the EER alliance get up and running.  -- Bob

This just means that students should have several mentoring relationships available to them within their summer research experiences, including peer, near-peer, and hierarchical (student-student, undergraduate-student, scientist-student, teacher-student, etc.) mentoring. Students will get different things from different people, both because they have different roles in the program and because they have their own complex histories, capacities and deficits. The goal is to provide as diverse a set of opportunities for development as possible.

To add a bit of detail to Cassie's note:

In our core mentee placements, the ones we have the most influence over:

HS students are organized into research teams with anywhere from 2 to about 8 students.  (At the larger end, the kids might be working on field experiments in wetland restoration techniques; at the smaller scale they might be laboratory experiments.)  The teams are balanced between newcomers and students who had a previous year in the Program.  A college student, often a science major who was in our program as a HS student, is assigned as the Team Leader (TL).  The TL is responsible for the day-to-day operations: scheduling, transportation, equipment check lists, etc.  The team has a mentoring scientist, typically a senior Lamont-Doherty researcher, but sometimes one of the more experienced science teachers or an early-career Columbia scientist.  There are usually two people, a lead science teacher and the Program Director, who oversee all of the summer activities.  Finally, every HS student is assigned an individual mentor.  These are Lamonters, typically grad students and post docs, but could be from any level, who volunteer to have lunch one day a week with "their" HS student.  These lunchtime conversations, which last about 90 minutes, can cover anything.  We encourage the mentors to be curious about the students' lives, bot their backgrounds and their thoughts about the future.  We tell the mentees, "This is your time, you can ask your mentor about anything you're curious about or need help with." We hear back that there is a lot of discussion about how one gets from high school to grad school and a career in science. 

So ... from the high school student's point of view:

She's got her friends on the team, some of whom are novices like her, but some of whom have been here before and know the ropes.  She's got a college student, usually from a similar background, and usually someone who is already majoring in a science or engineering field.  She's got her scientist mentor.  She's got the program managers, who are not in the thick of her project, but are available for any interpersonal/organizational/personal issues that come up.  And she's got a grad student or post-doc for 90 minutes each week.

As Cassie said: each student creates her own path through this network of support, using the resources to backfill deficits, learn the technical and scientific material, work through any interpersonal issues, think about the future, etc.  On the surface, it seems that the Team Leaders are at the center of the mentoring experience.  They have a tremendous amount of contact with the mentees and are in a sort of "sweet spot" of being closely identified with the HS students and also being well along the journey toward a STEM career.  But in fact, we believe it is the layered, multi-dimensional mentoring environment that works. 

We are aiming to have a new site up towards the end of our INCLUDES pilot, a relatively small one but it will be a new site that has not had a program before. The fundamental model will be the same, which is that there is a research department/institution that will serve as the hub, then an informal learning partner or fieldwork site, then a network of schools to recruit students from, as well as a foundation/local private funder to assist with direct costs. We may add new program elements such as new areas of research (we're currently just focused on environmental chemistry) and new age groups (we currently only work with juniors and seniors in high school), but the cluster model that we have is the one we are trying to scale.

Thanks for your note Erica. The high school students are juniors or seniors, or rising college freshman. This is not a residential program. Students come from the 5 boroughs of NYC and neighborhoods around Lamont-Doherty (i.e. Rockland, Bergen, Westchester counties). We typically see a high school student for 2 years, starting in their junior year. And in many cases, our undergraduates are alumni of the program. We find that having them for 2 years is really effective, they get something new from it each year and even if they come back as an undergrad, they will take on new responsibilities/roles, so it's a new learning experience yet again.

We offer our courses on Columbia University's main campus, accessible by public transportation. We don't currently offer credit for it but we're working with the NYC Department of Education on this. Courses are free. Students get paid a stipend to attend the summer program, we cover their breakfasts and lunches, as well as their metrocards to take the subway to campus.

With your course, what are your concerns specifically at each college? If you can link me to your video, that'd be great. I'd love to take a look and chat some more.

We'd be very interesting in working with your partner at City College.  We have a very engaged partner there who is right now exploring what a research immersion implementation would look like.  This would be a good time to link her with your partner, avoid duplications and leverage each other's efforts.