Purdue News
Purdue News
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August 2, 2004 Purdue, NASA center share research with Indianapolis studentsWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A group of Indianapolis students will start school early – with a trip to Purdue University to learn about doing their own scientific research. About 150 ninth- through 12th-graders from the Key Learning Community, an Indianapolis public school, will participate in a three-day camp Aug. 4-6 to learn not only science and engineering, but also art, music and leadership skills. The camp, which is required for all high-school students at the school, is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Key Learning Community and the Purdue-based NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training for Advanced Life Support (NSCORT). "This is not a summer camp for these students," said Julia Hains-Allen, Purdue outreach manager for the center. "The students from Key Learning Community will work with Purdue faculty, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, on hands-on research projects. Attendance is a requirement for all students, and they will have the opportunity to learn about higher level research than high-schoolers are generally exposed to." The collaboration between the school and the center began about a year ago and focuses helping the students conduct high-level scientific research. Each high school student at the Key Learning Community is required to conduct his or her own research project. As part of the collaboration, Purdue faculty and students have kept a line of communication with the students to help the understand and design their own projects. Hains-Allen said the research the students do goes well beyond typical classroom science experiments. Key Learning Community student develop their own research questions and hypotheses, design their own experiments and collect original data. The school has also received donated equipment, including a full-size bioreactor like the ones Purdue researchers use, from Indianapolis and Tippecanoe County businesses for experiments,. During the camp, students will have the option of attending sessions with researchers working on several different projects that deal with space exploration, as well as other areas of engineering. Instead of simply allowing the students to talk with researchers, the two-hour sessions will focus on allowing the students to work hands-on in the research labs. Hains-Allen said this will allow them to gain practical experience that will help advance their own research projects when they return to school. In the sessions, students will learn about a broad range of science and engineering topics, including bridge building, using hydroponics to grow plants in artificial environments, nuclear engineering, bacteria growth, and engineering better tennis shoes. Purdue's new Department of Engineering Education not only helped to fund the camp, but many of the students' engineering sessions also were set up by the department. "Part of this department's mission is to help attract young people to the field of engineering and to show them that engineering is about creating things and solutions that will benefit society," said Kamyar Haghighi, head of the Department of Engineering Education. "I hope that we can help show these students the various disciplines in engineering and the exciting opportunities and career paths that they provide." Hains-Allen said, in addition to sessions focusing on science and engineering research, students will participate in a leadership-development course and have the opportunity to learn about different areas of art, including dance, acting and printmaking. "College is a time to explore and learn about a wide variety of areas," she said. "It is important to the missions of both Purdue and the Key Learning Center to help students develop a wide variety of interests. We want to show them that you can be a scientist and still be interested in music or dance." Hains-Allen said another goal of the camp is to expose students to life on a college campus to help encourage them to attend Purdue or another university after high school. Many Key Learning Community students would be first-generation college students. "Many of these students have not spent time on a college campus before," she said. "While they are here, they will live in residence hall and eat in cafeterias. We have tried to match the college experience as much we can so they will feel at home on a campus and understand that they are capable of being a part of the university." Besides the NSCORT, sponsors of the three-day camp include Purdue's Department of Engineering Education, NASA's Exploration Systems Mission, the National Science Foundation Network for Computational Nanotechnology, NASA's Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computers, Great Lakes Chemical Corp., Kroger Company, Frito Lay of Frankfort, Ind., and the Indiana Space Grant Consortium. Established by NASA in 2002, the NSCORT joined researchers at Purdue, Howard University and Alabama A&M University with NASA researchers to address requirements of supporting human life in space. The center focuses on four major issues: food production and safety, waste recycling, systems engineering, and educational outreach. Writer: Matt Holsapple, (765) 494-2073, mholsapple@purdue.edu Sources: Julia Hains-Allen, (765) 496-6694, hains@purdue.edu Kamyar Haghighi, (765) 494-3884, haghighi@purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu Related Web site: Note to Journalists: Broadcast-quality video b-roll will be available during the camp by contacting Matt Holsapple at (765) 494-2073, mholsapple@purdue.edu or Jesica Webb at (765) 494-2079, jwebb@purdue.edu.
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