Georgia Highlands College and UGA Griffin Campus are working together to help students succeed with guaranteed admission from GHC to UGA! #TakingCharge
Congratulations are in order for five Pike County High School seniors who recently completed the UGA Griffin Campus STEM Internship Program on Wednesday, April 14. The students -Victor Avila, Anna Edwards, Caitlyn Foster, Henry Glover and Davis Huber-spent the last school year conducting research on campus.
“Formally, these high achieving students can earn high school honors credit for participating,” said Be-Atrice Cunningham, UGA Griffin coordinator. “They also gain a wealth of information and personal experience, a rare opportunity for most high school students.”
It is not often that students get to work with world-renowned research scientists before they enter college, however for six seniors from Pike County High School that is exactly what happened for the 2017-2018 school year. The students are the second class of Pike County High School’s STEM Academy to complete the STEM Internship Program on the University of Georgia Griffin Campus.
Through the program, the students worked alongside UGA research scientists to become better prepared for post-secondary education and future careers in STEM fields.
Last summer, seven seniors from Pike County High School (PCHS) in Zebulon, Georgia, with an aptitude for science made a commitment to work alongside University of Georgia Griffin campus scientists three days a week for the entire school year. This month, they will complete their yearlong partnership.
The students, Courtney Bagwell, Dylan Blohm, Abigail Chasteen, Nikki Dodson, Megan Pitts, Taylor Thomas and Talisa Watts, are the first group to take part in the off-campus internship.
"The beauty and the flexibility of the (Pike County STEM) Academy is that we have a lot of standards, but we can pick and choose the ones that fit with science and math, and then add in the technology and the engineering through agriculture," said Greg Waits, the program's coordinator and the agriculture education teacher at the high school.
Students are selected for the program based on their test scores in math and science. Then they take advanced classes in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) areas during their freshman, sophomore and junior years before participating in the off-campus experience at UGA-Griffin.
Formally, the students earn Advanced Placement science credits for participating. They also gain a wealth of information and personal experience.
For the past 25 summers, high school students from across Georgia have worked side by side with scientists at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences through the Young Scholars Program.
Many of these students credit this first taste of life in a laboratory and on a university campus with launching their careers in science. Currently, 12 former Young Scholars are pursuing undergraduate degrees at CAES and more are pursuing other fields of study at UGA or working toward graduate degrees at other universities.
“For six weeks I was given the opportunity to work with actual professors, who are elites in their fields of study. I presented all the research that I did with my professor and competed to win first place at the competition. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this amazing program?” Ayodele Dare, a current UGA biological science major, said.
The Young Scholars Program is one of the most successful STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) mentoring programs in the nation, said Scott Angle, dean and director of CAES.
A group of Griffin High School biology students visited the University of Georgia Griffin Campus last week to conduct a science experiment under the direction of college students. The UGA students were fulfilling their service learning component of their “Basic Skills in the Laboratory” class, taught by Margie Paz, a senior lecturer in the microbiology department of the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
“Participating in this service-learning activity helped the college students meet the requirement of UGA’s new experiential learning initiative, which began this semester. Every UGA undergraduate student must now participate in a hands-on, learning opportunity outside of the classroom.
The GHS students who participated in the experiment are all currently enrolled in biology classes and were selected for the experience by their teachers. The high school students performed a genetic engineering experiment using green fluorescent protein (GFP) under the supervision of the UGA Griffin students. The experiment helped the GHS students understand the scientific process involved in the GFP gene’s expression, Paz said.
Planting gardens at schools is not a new concept. The school garden movement first took off in 1917 when the U.S. School Garden Army was created with the motto, “A garden for every child, every child in a garden.”
As of late, school gardens have experienced resurgence. A growing number of teachers are embracing school gardens to teach students much more than how to put a seed in the ground, care for it, watch it grow and enjoy the harvest provided by the plant.
Becky Griffin, community and school garden coordinator for University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, says school gardens are gaining momentum for several reasons, including science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education requirements.
“Schools can get a feather in their cap for using their school garden to meet the STEM certification,” Griffin said. “Teachers use their gardens to teach history by growing beans that (Meriwether) Lewis and (William) Clark brought back from their expedition, and they plant colonial gardens filled with crops from the time of George Washington. They also use school gardens to teach math. You use lots of division and recording to plant a garden. Some teachers have the students grow their crops in geometric shapes.”
English teachers use school gardens by reading a book, then planting crops or flowers that were mentioned in the book, Griffin said.
Pike County STEM Academy students visited UGA Griffin last week for an extensive tour. About 40 students toured state-of-the-art laboratories and met with world renowned faculty in areas including: food science, plant pathology, and insect genetics. The tour is part of the preliminary preparation for a planned collaboration between the school and university, slated to begin in the fall of 2016. For more photos, see our Facebook page.
Students from the East Coweta High School STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) academy toured UGA Griffin yesterday. They learned about degree opportunities at UGA’s CAES and got to see various areas of research on campus, including a drone demonstration. The drone is used in our turfgrass research for aerial monitoring of the turf. Other areas of interest were Food Science and Food Safety.
The University of Georgia Griffin Campus, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, recently held their 3rd annual NASA Science Writing Challenge banquet where area high school students were recognized for outstanding achievement in science writing. Three finalists received an all-expense paid trip to a NASA space camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL where they will participate in a six-day Advanced Space Academy. While at camp, they will be immersed in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) focusing on college and career preparations.
The winning finalists heading to space camp in July are Joshua Barkley, Spalding High School, first place; Peace Olaniran, Jonesboro High School, second place; and Cierrah Guerrero, Pike County High School, third place. The students were mentored by Dr. Ian Flitcroft and Dr. Tim Williams.
