The programs described below are past projects and are no longer active.

Reaching Out to Rural North Carolina

The Science House intorduces two exciting programs that address the problem of educational equity in the rural and small town schools of North Carolina. The Team Science and Howard Hughes Precollege Programs are similar year-round partnerships of teachers and NCSU that bring training, resources, and support to high school science students.

Team Science

The Team Science Program is a joint effort of The Science House, the Physics and Chemistry Departments, and the College of Education and Psychology at NCSU. The goal of the Team Science program is to provide to physics and chemistry students in rural and small-town high schools the same learning opportunities available to their peers in the metropolitan schools of North Carolina. Groups of teachers from high schools in small towns and rural areas in Eastern North Carolina participate in a two-year program and assemble at The Science House for four weeks in July to learn about new teaching technologies, such as Macintosh computers, laser disks, and microcomputer-based laboratory equipment. The teachers form a network for the development of teaching ideas that complement the new teaching technologies the Team Science summer program provides. At the end of the summer program, the teachers perform demonstrations for superintendents, principals, and other educational staff to emphasize the importance of utilizing up-to-date science curriculum and equipment in their classrooms. During the academic year, the Team Science Master Teacher travels to schools with the teaching equipment and helps the teachers to use the equipment with their own classes. Twenty-five teachers representing 14 rural schools are presently participating. The coordinator of the Team Science project is Scott Ragan.

Howard Hughes Precollege Science Outreach Program

The NCSU Howard Hughes Medical Institute Precollege Outreach Program is a joint effort of the Biology Outreach Program and The Science House at NCSU. The program focuses on rural schools in North Carolina. The primary goal of the NCSU/HHMI Program is to improve students' preparation in science and to encourage them to consider careers in the sciences. We seek to achieve this goal by helping teachers improve the quality of their teaching, increase the amount of hands-on laboratory activities, and increase the use of modern teaching equipment, especially computers and computer-based laboratory equipment. During the summer, the teachers attend workshops at NC State University to receive training and develop curriculum materials for implementation into their classes. During the academic year, a van with teaching equipment travels from school to school. A master teacher works closely with local teachers to provide technical support and to aid in teaching as needed. The original teachers in the program have now become trainers for other teachers and are assisting in the spread of this program to new areas of North Carolina.

Funding from the NCSU/HHMI program has supported the following activities:

• Ongoing equipment support for fourteen teachers in seven high schools in rural North Carolina. The HHMI Master Teacher makes about 80 trips per year to transfer equipment and to provide assistance to this core group of schools. Most of these schools have high minority populations and large groups of economically disadvantaged students. This core group of teachers taught about 1,700 students using HHMI equipment, and most of the schools have acquired additional equipment with the aid of NCSU/HHMI personnel. Many of these teachers are now providing technology training to other teachers in their base schools.

• Providing twenty-five teacher training workshops, most concerning the use of microcomputer (MBL) and calculator-based laboratory (CBL) equipment in teaching science and mathematics. Three hundred teachers from schools across North Carolina participated in HHMI-supported training program, many of which were taught by teachers from the NCSU/HHMI core group.

• NCSU has used the HHMI experience to build collaborations with other agencies and funding sources to increase the teacher training and equipment support programs to areas of North Carolina outside the original NCSU/HHMI area.

For more information on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Precollege Outreach Program, contact the Coordinator, Judy Day, at The Science House: (919) 515-6118.