The
UMKC Minority Outreach Science Enrichment Program (MOSEP) was designed
to provide unique hands-on science and inquiry-based learning experiences for grades 8-9 science students in the Kansas City urban school districts.
During the summer of 2004, a pilot program was organized in conjunction with North
East Middle School and a community partner: Kansas City Alliance for Community
Educators (ACE).
LCAM
organized this program, in
part, because of a commitment to promoting K-12 science education and reaching
out to the KCMO School District to help instill a passion for science.
Nationwide, African-American and Hispanic students are disproportionately
underrepresented in the field of science and especially in the geosciences.
Racial minority groups represent about 25% of the population, and earn about 15%
of the total bachelor’s degrees granted in science and engineering; and only
4.6% of the geosciences BS degrees (NSF Geosciences Diversity Workshop, 2000;
www.geo.nsf.gov/geo/diversity).
Kansas City has a large and vibrant Hispanic and African-American communities
and it would be wonderful to see many more youth from these communities going on
to college to pursue science careers.
The
summer 2004 pilot program was organized as a day camp (8:00am – 12:00pm:
Monday - Friday) for six weeks. Middle school science teacher and head of the science
department at North East Middle School (Mr. Greg Lovelace) accompanied the
students to the UMKC Volker campus and helped to run the program. The MOSEP science interns were exposed to a variety of activities, including math/science
instruction, visits to various UMKC science laboratories, and participation in field-based
research of the Laboratory for Climate Analysis and Modeling (LCAM). Follow-up activities included year long academic
mentoring designed to provide the students additional research exposure opportunities
during the following school year through active participation in science club
activities at North East Middle School.
