Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
K-12 FOCUS MIT Educational Outreach Updated in New Survey From chemistry magic shows to robot tours to talks on the history of clocks, this spring MIT staff, students and faculty will present at least 29 educational programs that reach out to students in grades K-12 and the community at large, a News Office survey has found. These programs range from tours of MIT laboratories to scientific road shows to the recruitment of pre-college teachers among graduating MIT seniors. Specifically, spring outreach efforts include the High School Studies Program, which offers kids in grades 7-12 a range of noncredit courses over 10 Saturdays; seminars in nuclear technology at the Nuclear Reactor Lab for pre-college science teachers; tours of the Haystack Observatory in Westford; and a Spring Outreach Day at the Plasma Fusion Center. Overall, the survey found 40 educational outreach programs offered through the Institute. Half of these programs focus on science and engineering. They include the Chemistry Magic Show for children in grades 4-6 and On Science and Engineering, a three-week lecture series for second graders. A total of 11 programs address education in general. These include the Cambridge Partnership for Public Education, which runs a variety of programs including Project RICH (Reading Improvement with Computer Help), and Parenting Programs, which address issues like child care and discipline. For those interested in extended study, 12 programs run for more than a week. These include the Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science, which introduces minority high-school students to engineering and science via a 6-week summer program; SAT Preparation, which runs for 6 weeks on Sunday afternoons and includes an intensive review of either verbal or math skills; and the Young Scholars Program, which gives 20-40 middle-school students two-week summer internships at Haystack Observatory. In a further breakdown of the programs, 10 reach out to children in elementary schools, 12 to those in junior high, and 28 to high-school students; several cover all three age groups. In addition, six programs focus on teachers. These include the Nuclear and Particle Physics Program for High School Physics Teachers and the Science and Engineering Program for High School Teachers. Finally, eight programs offer tours of various MIT facilities, including the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory and the MIT Museum. And 10 of the 41 programs are run by MIT students. For more information on any of these programs, or if you have a program the News Office might not know about, contact Outreach Coordinator Elizabeth Thomson at the News Office, Rm 5-111, x8-5402.