By Jenna Somers
Metro Nashville Public School students enrolled in programs offered by the Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development experienced a summer of learning that sowed the seeds of budding scientists. The CSEO enhances STEM literacy through establishing unique partnerships between university scientists, K-12 educators and students, and the local and global science community. Students’ summer experiences were supported, in part, by a new three-year, $750,000 grant from Regeneron as part of the company’s five-year, $5 million investment to bolster Nashville’s STEM ecosystem.
“The Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach at Peabody College has a rich history of connecting the Vanderbilt research community with MNPS students who share a passion for STEM education,” said Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development. “I am grateful to the CSEO team and Regeneron, for their commitment to giving young aspiring scientists, engineers, and mathematicians immersive learning opportunities in STEM fields.”
MNPS students collaborated on STEM research projects, worked side-by-side with researchers in Vanderbilt labs, and presented their scholarship at prestigious STEM fairs and in front of Nashville leaders. From the end of spring semester through summer, students in the CSEO’s School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, Interdisciplinary Science and Research, and Day of Discovery programs embraced Vanderbilt’s “dare to grow” ethos.
“Our team’s mission is to connect Vanderbilt’s cutting-edge scholarly community with local students to create greater access to the world of science and engineering research,” said Angela Eeds, executive director of the CSEO. “Comprised of staff and postdoctoral fellows with diverse STEM backgrounds, our team shares their expertise with students through innovative curricula and hands-on learning opportunities.”
The School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt
In 2034 scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory will turn on the new Electron-Ion Collider, a particle accelerator that could lead to novel discoveries about the fundamental structure of matter. But who might these future pathbreaking scientists be? It is possible they could be MNPS students who attended a particle physics workshop at the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt in June.
SSMV is a joint venture between Vanderbilt and MNPS to offer high school students a four-year, interdisciplinary, research-centered learning experience at Vanderbilt where they collaborate with faculty and undergraduate and graduate student mentors.
Raghav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, assistant professor of physics, has led the hands-on particle physics workshop at SSMV for the past two years.
“We are building this new collider to run new experiments, but we need the scientific workforce to maximize the collider’s discoveries. So we need to be training that workforce right now. My goal with these workshops is for every high school student to know that this is a career path. I ask them, ‘What do you plan to do in 2034? Well, you’ll hopefully be working with me on the Electron-Ion Collider.’ Now, of course, not all of them are going to become physicists, but just learning the computational skills in this workshop will serve them well,” Professor Raghav said.
Professor Raghav has made the workshop curriculum publicly available so that any institution can implement it with local high school students. They also train students in their lab to act as peer mentors in the workshop.
Lucas Mefferd, a senior at Nashville School of the Arts, has been an SSMV student since the beginning of high school. This summer he served as a mentor in the particle physics workshop and ran computer simulations in Professor Raghav’s lab to predict proton and electron collisions in the EIC that could reveal new insights on the structure of matter.
“Over the course of my four years in SSMV, I’ve learned a lot of useful skills about how to do research, approach a problem, and how to navigate resources and relationships with my peers and teachers. It’s greatly strengthened my scientific skills. I’m able to learn new concepts a lot more quickly and understand interdisciplinary connections between scientific fields. In ninth grade, I started with a small project, expanded to bigger projects each year, and now I’m working in a lab and mentoring younger peers. This has been an invaluable experience in preparing me for college and pursuing a degree in aerospace engineering,” Mefferd said.
Eventually, Professor Raghav plans to build capacity to host undergraduate STEM mentors from other institutions. They are particularly interested in diversifying the EIC scientific workforce. To that end, in addition to the diversity of the SSMV cohorts, last year’s workshop included undergraduate mentors from HBCUs. Professor Raghav hopes to secure funding to continue inviting HBCU students as well as undergraduate students from across the country to join the workshop at Vanderbilt and implement it at their home institutions.
In addition to the workshop, SSMV students engaged in events that further showcased and celebrated their talents. In July they presented posters at the 2024 Summer Research Symposium at Vanderbilt. During the spring semester, they attended a fashion and design workshop at the Wond’ry. In May Metro Councilperson At-Large Zulfat Suara spoke at the SSMV Class of 2024 Commencement. She was joined at the ceremony by MNPS School Board Chair Rachael Anne Elrod and school board members Berthena Nabaa-McKinney and TK Fayne.
Interdisciplinary Science and Research
The Interdisciplinary Science and Research program brings together scientists and MNPS teachers to co-teach STEM courses at Stratford STEM Magnet High School, Hillsboro High School, and John Overton High School.
Eight ISR students participated in the Research Experience for High School Students program, a six-week summer research internship at Vanderbilt for rising high school seniors interested in STEM careers. They joined SSMV students at the Summer Research Symposium to present their findings.
“Being a part of ISR and the REHSS program and working in a professional lab at Vanderbilt University has been an amazing experience. I’ve had the opportunity to understand what real research looks like and that simple experiments like mine can impact real-world problems such as dilated cardiomyopathy and congenital heart diseases,” said Darilyn Finch, a senior at Hillsboro High School who conducted research on muscle cells and proteins in the human heart in the lab of Dylan Burnette, associate professor of cell and developmental biology. Finch aspires to become a medical doctor.
ISR also collaborated with the Ayin Project and the Nashville POWER Youth Summer Employment Initiative to launch the inaugural Summer High School Internships in Research Experiences program, which gives rising juniors and rising seniors the opportunity to participate in paid internships with Vanderbilt scientists. SHIRE students attended the research symposium to learn how to present research projects, as some of them will present capstone projects in their senior year.
In May Stratford STEM Magnet High School’s ISR students and teachers celebrated the Bee Grand Opening. Honeybee Tennessee provided a grant to support two beehives and beekeeping equipment at the school. The ISR program also received funding from the Centennial Park Conservancy’s Earth Day Nashville for beekeeping infrastructure and a grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority for thermal cameras to help monitor the hives.
“The purpose of the hives is manifold and benefits both our educational and neighborhood communities,” said Jesi Seifert, lead ISR teacher at Stratford. “The hives will allow students to observe a cooperative colony of organisms over time, understand the activities and processes that allow the colonies to survive, collect scientific data that will be utilized in class and individual research projects, and learn skills that would allow them to pursue a valuable and lucrative hobby or career. Our ISR students, in turn, will teach what they learn to the elementary and middle school students from our feeder schools, both on our campus and theirs, not only advancing their environmental education but increasing community support for honeybees and beekeeping. Additionally, the hives will provide local pollination services to the community surrounding Stratford STEM Magnet’s campus, utilize Stratford’s extensive pollinator gardens, and will (hopefully one day soon) provide honey and other hive materials for use in educational and economic initiatives.”
ISR students also presented at the Middle Tennessee Science and Engineering Fair in the spring. Alex Zambrano, an ISR student at John Overton High School, was the grand prize winner at the fair and won first place in environmental sciences. In May they attended the International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles. Nine other ISR students placed first through third in various categories at the MTSEF.
Day of Discovery at the Zoo
The Day of Discovery program provides MNPS middle school students immersive research-based STEM learning experiences one school day per week at educational sites across Nashville.
As a culmination to their school year, 31 Day of Discovery students from William Henry Oliver Middle School, McMurray Middle School, and Croft Design Center Middle School presented scientific research projects during Day of Discovery at the Nashville Zoo. The projects contributed to the zoo’s mission of conservation and animal well-being. Students also explored ways to make the zoo more accessible to people with visual impairments by creating tactile images of animals. They used AI to create audio recordings of scientific facts about animals and detailed descriptions of the tactile images. They also created audio QR codes to link to animal information and image descriptions. School board member Freda Player attended the event.
Beyond the Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach
As CSEO students return to MNPS classrooms this fall, their summer experiences of hands-on research, mentorship, and community engagement have equipped them with invaluable skills to continue their STEM journeys long after high school. In ten years, they might work on the EIC and reshape humanity’s knowledge of the physical world. They might cure heart disease, become a beekeeper, or make significant advancements in animal conservation. No matter what path they lead, the ripple effects of their educational experiences with the CSEO will extend far beyond the classrooms and labs of Vanderbilt.
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