After years of programs aimed at women and minorities across the country, growth among women studying and pursuing careers in science has been improving steadily at the graduate and undergraduate levels, while participation among some minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, remains flat, according to Pat Marstellar, director of Hughes Science Initiatives at Emory. Many elementary school teachers never studied appreciable quantities of math and science, yet now are faced with imparting all the basics that their students are likely to get. The initiative, founded by Emory cell biology professor Robert DeHaan, serves approximately 1,600 teachers in 69 elementary schools. For the first time in Georgia, an academy within a public school has been dedicated to health and human services.
Test scores go up, graduation rates go up, attendance in college goes up.
Promote Careers in the Health Sciences Teams of graduate-level Emory and Morehouse medical and health sciences students are being placed with middle school classes in the Atlanta area to boost interest in health science careers. The HSGs work with teachers to create programs for their classes, parent science labs, family science programs, science fairs and similar projects. For example, in one after-school science club, a little invisible glow powder went a long way in demonstrating concepts in epidemiology. At the end of class, the lights went out, and of course the kids were covered from head to toe with glow powder. Suddenly a bunch of kids who wanted to be nurses or doctors wanted to be epidemiologists.