Paper 9.6 Local Mentor Partnership in an Urban High School to Promote Post-Secondary STEM Career Paths James Carrigan[1] Dave Anastasio [1], Alec Bodzin [2], Kate Popejoy [3], Tom Hammond [2], Shannon Salter Burghardt [4], Ian Hanson [4], Scott Rutzmoser [5], Bill Farina [2], Breena Holland [6] and Dork Sahagian [1]. [1] LU Earth and Environmental Sci., [2] LU Instructional Technology, [3] Independent Mentoring Consultant, [4] Building 21 Teacher, [5] LU Senior Geospatial Specialist, & [6] LU Political Science NSF ITEST Grant DRL - 1614216

Project Overview Nine different field and classroom based geospatial investigations and projects are held over the course of a school year. These investigations take place in an urban high school with ~150 freshmen level students each year. General project overview. The nine projects cover mostly social and environmental sciences (Trees, UHI, Zoning, Carbon Sequestration, Built Environment, Transportion Modes, etc.)

Mentor Distribution 15 Mentors from 8 different local businesses, government agencies, and academic institutions assisted with student learning and provided real life examples of STEM career paths Showing the diverse work environments that our mentors are from and giving examples of the sort of work our mentors assist with inside and outside of the classroom.

Where in the world are we talking about Where in the world are we talking about. Both Lehigh University and Allentown exist as an urban center roughly equidistant from Philadelphia and NYC Google Earth Imagery

Zooming in we see that the high school is located within the City of Allentown and is approximately 10 miles from Lehigh University. Allentown, PA has a population of ~120,000 and is the third largest city in PA Google Earth Imagery

Allentown High School Demographics Paper 9.6 Allentown High School Demographics Student Enrollment 4,679 (2016) Racial Heritage & Identity Hispanic / Latino 60.4% Two or more races 22.2% Black / African American 8.7% White non Hispanic 6.7% All others 2.0% Low Household Income 84.9% Transient Student Population >40% Local Mentor Partnership in an Urban High School to Promote Post-Secondary STEM Career Paths Authors: James Carrigan, Dave Anastasio, Alec Bodzin, Kate Popejoy, Tom Hammond, Shannon Salter Burghardt, Ian Hanson, Scott Rutzmoser, Bill Farina, Breena Holland and Dork Sahagian. Quick view of B21 high school and some student demographics Building 21 is one of three high schools in Allentown and is competency based focused on career development and project based learning. It has a much smaller student population of roughly 500 students and students are selected on a lottery basis.

Building 21 High School Demographics Below are the demographics of students who responded to all survey questions, roughly 170 total students participated each year. Implementation Year Number of Participants English Language Learners Motivationally Challenged Learners School Year 2016-2017 129 21% 20% School Year 2017-2018 112 24% 25% School Year 2018-2019 ~130 23% 22% More specific demographics of our student population showing the number of survey responses, ELL, and motivationally challenged students. 2018-2019 data is preliminary and was kindly provided last minute by Bill Farina

Social Envrionmental Science Invesitgations (SESI) Inquiry based investigations Map based mobile data collection Analysis with web-based mapping software Pedagogical frameworks of place-based educational and socio-scientific investigations Local issues Field work in a local setting

Mentor Selection and Assistance Mentors are selected from partner companies or agencies Video and text guides are provided online Mentors can also meet with teachers prior to the investigation We provide a lot of resources to mentors online that allows them to review the investigation and familiarize themselves with the software prior to arriving at the school. The video is a snippet from one of our instructional videos (normally they contain sound) showing the type of instruction we provide. All mentor resources are available online at https://eli.lehigh.edu/sesi/mentors

Mentor Assistance with Investigations Steve Dahl assisted in creating a tree dichotomous key for the few blocks surrounding B21 High School that was used in development of a specialized iBook for student use outside. We focused on creating a key that would be easy for students to navigate and which minimized incorrect identification of tree species. If this project is applied in different settings you will need to adjust the dichotomous key to match the surroundings

Trees and Ecological Services Mentors not only provide additional adults to supervise students outside, they can also provide help in data collection. The iBook developed for this investigation is shown. Students make simple choices from two possibilities and the reach a final data page about the tree identified. Students work in small groups to ID trees around their school

Trees and Ecological Services Screen grabs of the ArcGIS online student interface showing the complexity of data. Mentors really help students navigate this interface and can answer questions about data relationships, outliers, etc. The second image is a display of city wide crime statistics which student compare to tree canopy data to infer relationships In the classroom students compare tree canopy data across the city with crime

Trees and Ecological Services Screen grabs from a student Tree Planting Proposal. Mentors assist in laying the foundation for longer projects that teachers can then work on skills like writing and communicating results via presentations. All screenshots are from a student proposal in 2018 that laid out some changes to the B21 campus to increase tree coverage. Juniperus virginiana This investigation feeds into a later Tree Planting Proposal on school grounds

Student Responses to Mentors and Investigations Students responded positively to mentors and were especially interested in learning about future careers in STEM fields 69.7% of responses support increased mapping or ArcGIS classwork in their school 92% of responses found the Zoning Activity to be clearly taught 45.5% of responses were curious about jobs related to mapping or ArcGIS 5% of responses said they were unsuccessful in learning the ArcGIS online software Self explanatory

Challenges Mentors Diversity Peer Mentoring Repeat Mentorship While mentors were overall a positive experience for students there are some ways to improve mentorship for future years: Mentors Diversity Peer Mentoring Repeat Mentorship Scheduling Recruiting more diverse group of mentors can help the student body better relate to their mentors. Our group of mentors was dominantly white males and by increasing racial or gender diversity within mentors we would be better serving our student’s diversity. We could also recruit within the school now that the project has been running for several years. These peer mentors can provide help bridging the gap between adults and students and will best understand the student’s perspective. We found the students connected better to mentors who were able to attend multiple investigations and this facilitated informal conversations between mentor and students. The biggest issue was with scheduling mentors for outside activities that could be cancelled or postponed due to weather. Many mentors work full time jobs and are unable to reschedule make up time last minute as needed.

The End Questions and thank you Video is an example of a webmap that shows historical air photos of Allentown from 1938 within the circle overlaying modern day satellite imagery. This was used in the classroom (along with an intermediate air photo layer) to show students how land use changes over time and can be influence by changes in technology or society.