STEM FOR ALL

USF COLLEGE OF EDUCATION CONTINUES BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS

Carrie O’Brion

The vital importance of STEM education is widely accepted as the demand for skilled workers in these areas continues to grow. But despite this recognition, the U.S. continues to lag significantly behind other countries in the field.

A 2018 White House study showed that only 20 percent of U.S. high school grads were ready for the rigors of academic majors in STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math. In addition, over the previous 15 years, the U.S. has produced only 10 percent of the world’s science and engineering graduates.

The gap is even more pronounced among people of color. From 2017 to 2019, Black professionals made up only nine percent of STEM workers, which is less than their 11 percent share of the overall U.S. workforce. The representation is even lower among Hispanic professionals, who comprise only eight percent of STEM workers.

The University of South Florida’s College of Education is stepping in to help close those gaps by continuing an emphasis on STEM education and helping to make these subjects more accessible to all.

“The current STEM workforce doesn’t really reflect the population it is serving,” said David Rosengrant, campus dean of the College of Education on the USF St. Petersburg campus. “Our goal is to make STEM accessible for all and to ensure we are creating opportunities for everyone to succeed.”

Earlier this year, the College of Education received a $75,000 grant from Duke Energy to establish a local chapter of a national program that creates academic opportunities and career pathways in STEM for students from minority and low-income populations. Called the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievements (MESA) Schools Program, it is based on the USF St. Petersburg campus.

The program is especially meaningful to College of Education Dean Anthony Rolle, who participated in the program as a high school student. Rolle largely credits it with providing a pipeline to enter a lucrative career and being able to see himself in that field.

“The MESA program was – and is – quite visionary… gave me opportunities that I would not have experienced otherwise,” Rolle said. “A major aspect of the program provided quarterly field trips to specific industries that paired visiting students with employees from the same high school, so students could see themselves in that industry.

As students matured to high school juniors and seniors, these same corporations provided paid summer internships. In fact, my first full-time summer job was at an IBM Lab working as a novice computer program intern. Not bad for a kid with a hard-working single mom.”

The grant will be used to launch partnerships with schools, develop curriculum, establish STEM-focused clubs and recruit female and minority students in Pinellas County.

“Many students may be fascinated with STEM, but don’t feel that STEM is a career for them. But we need individuals from every walk of life to participate in these careers,” Rosengrant said. “We hope this program will make kids more knowledgeable and excited for these fields, so they feel that they belong in this realm and will develop abilities to become successful in college and beyond.”

MESA began in 1969 as a pre-college intervention and solutions program in California and has served more than 49,000 students from over 350 school districts across the country. USF is the first institution to host a chapter of the program in Florida and only the third in the eastern U.S. Programming will initially be directed at middle schools in Pinellas County, with plans to expand to grades K-12 in the six counties surrounding Tampa Bay in the future.

The USF team, led by Rolle and Rosengrant, is working with local schools to attract underrepresented populations to career opportunities in STEM fields. Students in the program will have access to STEM enrichment activities, mentorship programs and career shadowing opportunities with technologybased businesses from software development to cybersecurity.

While currently housed at the St. Petersburg campus, the chapter is expected to grow to include the Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.

“As a young person, I said if I ever had the chance to create such a program like MESA, that I would,” Rolle said. “The academic and economic opportunities the USF MESA chapter will create as the program matures will be instrumental in supporting future STEM students and educators of STEM subjects as well as allow local corporations and organizations the opportunity to invest in their community and the development of potential future employees, managers and CEOs at their companies.”

In addition to creating new pathways for young people to excel in STEM, the College of Education is also working on innovative new solutions to help teachers illustrate some of the most challenging and complex concepts within STEM fields.

Faculty from the USF College of Education and the Physics department won a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop augmented reality simulations to improve students’ understanding and education outcomes in general physics courses.

A total of six augmented reality simulations –combining real world experiences with highly visual and interactive computer-generated content - will be produced and cover some of the core concepts of the subject: magnetic fields, rotational motion, thermodynamics, optics, forces and circuits.

Once completed, these simulations will be housed on a platform for other educators to use in a classroom, a museum or other learning environments for free.

“When teaching in large lecture halls, you really can lose the hands-on component of education, especially for a subject like physics,” Rosengrant said. “Technology such as augmented reality is a tool that we should use more as it will allow us to reach into the world where a lot of students today consume information: their phones and other devices.”

Over the course of the next year, Education and Physics faculty working with USF’s Advanced Visualization Center will develop a variety of simulations that are beneficial to educators and useful in a classroom setting. For some simulations, students will hold and manipulate a cube that is mapped to a digital screen. For others, students can change certain parameters of a simulation, altering how it runs. Each will allow students to better explore subjects and enhance the learning experience.

When teaching in large lecture halls, you really can lose the hands-on component of education, especially for a subject like physics.

“During the pandemic, we saw how everyone had to change how they teach, and it has created an expectation from students that more material should be accessed online. Augmented reality technology can facilitate that access and provide more exciting and deeper opportunities for learning,” said Karina Hensberry, associate professor of Mathematics Education on the St. Petersburg campus, who was part of the team awarded the grant.

Once developed, each simulation will undergo refinements during the trial stages. Focus groups of educators will also provide user feedback for fine tuning, ensuring the simulation achieves the desired learning outcomes.

The augmented reality simulations are expected to be introduced to students taking the Physics 1 general course during the 2024 calendar year. While using this interactive technology to teach students, researchers will measure how effective it is. They plan to conduct student interviews between those who have used augmented reality and those who have not, track gains and analyze other relevant data.

The research team is also planning to develop a curriculum around the use of augmented reality technology for physics education that teachers can – like the simulations themselves - use for free. The curriculum will align with the Next Generation Science Standards, making the simulations and curriculum available for any educator in the United States and abroad to have access to and use for grades 6-12.

Based on experiences and successes with the technology in the college classroom, the researchers hope to expand the use of augmented reality for teaching concepts in physics into other settings and groups.

“Learning doesn’t just happen within four walls of a classroom, so we are looking at venues like museums, festivals and other opportunities beyond traditional schools,” Rosengrant said. “Situations where the public can learn about these concepts on their own and see how physics plays a part in their everyday life.”