FCAT scores got you down? Wondering whether your grade-schooler's lack of interest in science, technology, engineering and math means she won't be able to get into college much less land a job that pays a decent wage? (Really?)
Before you dismiss her chances and start investing all your hopes and dreams in lottery tickets, consider how you can introduce her and her teachers to the Scientific League of Superheroes, a new project developed by three Ph.D. candidates in USF's College of Engineering.
The students -- Samuel DuPont (MegaByte), Audrey Buttice (Sublimation), and Robert Bair (Super Conductor) -- are working with four Hillsborough County elementary schools to pique kids' interests in STEM studies.
Wearing costumes and masks similar to cartoon action characters and making things go poof in the classroom in the middle of the day, the college students challenge their young audience members to find the fun in STEM.
Already, teachers at Tampa Palms, Robles, Chiles and Maniscalco elementary schools say their students are performing better in the classroom and expect higher test scores in the future. See this report by
ABC Action News.
The
Super Hero Training Network, an outgrowth of the National Science Foundation-funded STARS program, is now looking for participants for next school year.
Writer:
Diane Egner
Source: Vickie Chachere, USF
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Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.