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Service, STEM, and success: exploring the untapped potential of veterans in STEM fields
Dr. Regina Werum presents as part of the Diversity and Social Justice Panel, USMA West Point Diversity Leadership Conference, March 2017
Photo credit: Major Jacob Absalon
At the State-Federal Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Summit in June 2018, leaders from across the country concluded, "By working to improve access to STEM programs for underrepresented and underserved groups, America can close the labor gap that persists between good jobs and qualified workers." Ensuring this access will undoubtedly involve multiple approaches, but key initial steps include identifying and attracting individuals who are likely to succeed in STEM fields. With funding from the National Science Foundation, researchers Regina Werum and Christina Steidl are currently studying one such high potential population: military veterans.
"Veterans are highly trained individuals who are well-suited for STEM careers. The military can increase the size and diversity of the STEM pool," said Werum, professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She and Steidl, associate professor of sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, are funded by the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Joseph Whitmeyer, a director in NSF's sociology program, said that the research "is advancing our understanding of STEM career trajectories by exploring the role of the U.S. military as a potential career pathway."
Werum and Steidl are using data from the American Community Survey and Department of Defense Demographic Reports to study the connections between military service, STEM education success and labor force outcomes. They have looked at fields of study and occupational outcomes of more than nine million adults, including more than 700,000 veterans, and their work indicates that veterans have a greater chance of completing a STEM degree and subsequently joining the STEM labor force than their civilian counterparts.
Their research also suggests that the relationship between military service and completion of a STEM degree is stronger for women than for men. Werum and Steidl are investigating possible causes for this pattern. For example, women who are already interested in STEM fields may be more inclined to join the military. Alternatively, exposure to technologies, training, education and experiences during their service may increase interest in STEM. It is also possible that the disproportionate success of women veterans in STEM fields can be partly attributed to the fact that those women are already used to working in a traditionally male-dominated field, which mirrors the situation in many STEM disciplines.
Looking at the entire population of veterans, Werum and Steidl believe that veterans constitute a largely untapped reservoir of future STEM workers, in part because many veterans transitioning back into civilian life remain unaware of their transferable skills developed in the military and the opportunities STEM degrees can provide.
Veterans may be a high-potential STEM population for a variety of reasons, the researchers say. Military experience prepares individuals well for applied fields that require ordered and meticulous work, such as laboratories, where a detailed progression of steps must be followed. Military roles can also give soldiers applied STEM experience that can augment their studies, for example, using various technologies or working on machinery.
"Those [veterans] who do it, they succeed, and I think we can draw on them more. That would benefit both veterans and STEM fields," said Werum. She and Steidl are now building on their research and working with veteran success centers at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities to learn more from enrolled veterans about their pathways into STEM fields.
Facilitating greater access to STEM fields is complex, but identifying strong candidate pools and effective outreach strategies are integral first steps. Werum and Steidl's continuing research is revealing more about the potential benefits of improving access to STEM for an underrepresented, diverse and high-potential population.
AI-boosted birdbot, greater tomaters, battery anatomy, and the evolutionary pursuit of carbs. It’s 4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn’t Hear About This Week.
They're inside us and all around us. We destroy millions of them a day without a second thought, but there's no question we need them. In fact, they're often misunderstood. We're talking about bacteria, or microbes.
Above: A diversity of bacteria cultured from decaying plant material (leaf litter)
UC Irvine Biologist Jennifer Martiny puts them in "cages" to study them. In our featured podcast, she discusses her findings and how these tiny forces of nature impact our environment: bit.ly/2YhwGHF
Above: Microbial “cages” in the field; the microbial communities can be manipulated separately from the environment by caging them in litterbags made of very fine nylon mesh
Below: Michaeline Albright places out litterbags with different microbial communities inside as part of an experiment along a Southern California elevation gradient
Einstein Fellow Stephanie Harry’s inspiration begins with a walk down the hall
My father, pastor John C. Fuller, got me interested in science when he would take my siblings and me to work with him at Howard University School of Medicine. He set up little experiments for us and had us write equations on the board. He was the first teacher I really appreciated; he helped set the course for my life.
Everyone at the School of Medicine wore lab coats, and when I walked the halls, I would see all the images associated with medical school. Some were scary, and others were interesting. It was during these times I decided I wanted to become a pediatrician.
I became interested in chemistry at Norfolk State University while taking Alan H. Rowe’s chemistry class and working in his biochemistry lab. Later, when I was an adjunct professor at NSU, another professor, Jean Krail, encouraged me to obtain my master's degree in secondary education and become a chemistry teacher, which I did.
I taught chemistry for more than 22 years in the same classroom at Kecoughtan High School in the Hampton City Schools District, Hampton, Virginia, but I wanted to do more. I reevaluated how I could continue to contribute to education and became an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow. The fellowship gave me the chance to grow as an individual, educator and leader.
There are not enough words to express how appreciative I am of the teachers who inspired and encouraged me along my journey. I saw how they strove to give their best to their students every day. I applaud and celebrate them and every other teacher who is working to make a change. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
NSF Einstein Fellow’s family legacy with math inspires her to help high-risk students
Both of my parents were teachers, so I grew up immersed in the impact of teaching. We couldn’t go anywhere without people coming up and thanking my mom, who taught high school English, or my dad, who taught high school math and science, for being their teacher.
I can’t even calculate the impact on the community my parents had. My dad is now the mayor of the town and a member of the school board; he taught all the other school board members!
My decision to be a teacher came from ability, passion and a desire to have a lasting positive impact on young people. In addition to the influence of my parents, I was fortunate to have great teachers of my own.
Elizabeth Ward, my third-grade teacher, was so patient, kind and ridiculously fair. She showed me the beauty of patterns and algorithms in multiplication and long division, and then she gave me a bonus algorithm to check my work using “casting out nines.”
Ron Loser, one of my undergraduate math professors, saw something in me – probably how happy math makes me – and he still supports my journey today. He took the time to physically show me how to see the 3D coordinate plane in multivariable calculus. That was the key that unlocked the door to higher mathematics for me.
The lessons my parents and teachers taught helped me teach students with some of the worst possible lives you can imagine. For the last seven years, I taught math to highly at-risk youth at Byron Syring Delta Center and Monte Vista Online Academy in Monte Vista, Colorado.
Once, a 16-year-old young man came in with a bandanna on his head (imagine the movie Stand and Deliver) and an intensity to learn some math. He was studying for his GED and kept missing the same concept. I explained the concept to him in the context of his “street” life. He literally clapped his hands and laughed out loud while he exclaimed, “Is it really that easy?” It was the reaction of a really happy first grader in a gangster outfit.
This one moment led me to write four books to simplify complex math concepts into everyday ideas that are more accessible for students: the Math That Makes Sense series. It also ignited my passion for equity in access and instruction for students living in poverty and underrepresented minorities. I have seen the benefit of social emotional learning, trauma informed practices, and a strong content background.
I can’t think of another job where I can make such an impactful difference, be creative, and communicate my excitement for math content all day, every day. Thanks to my parents, to Mrs. Ward, Dr. Loser, my students, and all my teachers who inspired me to pursue a math education. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
Einstein Fellow says teachers and mentors inspire her future
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a teacher. But it wasn’t until college that I realized I wanted to focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I had an amazing professor at Susquehanna University, Jack Holt, who not only taught me the value of scientific curiosity and inquiry, but also inspired me to be the STEM educator that I am today.
I have been a formal and informal K-12 STEM educator for almost two decades. I have taught an array of STEM subjects at all levels in Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.
I truly see myself as a lifelong learner, and as such, I have always pushed myself into new situations where I could grow as an educator. After earning National Board Certification and a master’s degree, I eventually met my husband, Daniel Carpenter, who guided me outside of my comfort zone even further and taught me everything I know about mastery teaching and learning pedagogies.
I am now serving as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the National Science Foundation and completing my doctoral degree in STEM education. Both opportunities have shown me how to have a bigger voice in education and advocacy. Without support and encouragement from my mentors, I might not have known about these opportunities.
Looking to my future after the fellowship, I vow that, thanks to the mentorship and inspiration I have received from educators like my husband and Dr. Holt, as well as my colleagues at NSF, I will always do what is best for my students.
As I keep moving forward and striving to be the best educator I can be, I hope that I can be as influential a mentor to my pre-service educators as my mentors have been to me. I also challenge every educator and student to keep the following quote in mind. It guides me every single day and is why I am unapologetically passionate about STEM education:
“You have to do the thing that makes you tick. You have to do it on a daily basis. Do it unapologetically. Do it with love.” -Fitz Cahal
My name is Brenda Carpenter, and I want to say thank you to all the teachers and mentors I’ve had along the way.
NSF Einstein Fellow Cheryl Manning salutes influential teacher
My 5th grade teacher, Gene Sentz was the most important early influence on my professional career as a geologist and an educator. The National Science Foundation and Teacher Appreciation Week have given me a wonderful opportunity to say thank you.
As a student, I asked a lot of questions, many of which got me in trouble for being a pest, as I did when we studied paleontology. Mr. Sentz encouraged me to visit and talk to the paleontologists who had found dinosaur eggs not too far from where I lived. It was then that I realized I wanted to be a geologist and study the Earth’s history and processes. Unfortunately, this did not translate into behaving like a good student, so I struggled. Eventually, however, I earned my GED and went to college.
I studied geology at Montana State University, earning both Bachelor and Master of Science degrees there. After working on a doctorate for a couple of years, I realized my heart was in teaching, and I received certification to teach secondary science.
I dove headlong into creating and teaching courses that integrated the sciences through problem-based learning, introduced systems thinking and encouraged my students to write, create and present their work to each other and the wider community.
I always kept one foot in the research world. Early on, I worked with a team of scientists and education researchers to create professional development opportunities for teachers that emphasized earth systems science. Through that work, I met Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows who were placed with NSF’s Geosciences Directorate. Many of those have become lifelong friends who encouraged me to apply for and earn an Einstein Fellowship.
Thanks to Mr. Sentz’s encouragement all those years ago, I’ve had incredible opportunities to teach young students and follow my passions in Earth Sciences and Geology. Mr. Sentz made a difference for me and, in turn, every one of my students. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to him and to all teachers who are making a difference.
Prestigious John Bates Clark Medal awarded to Emi Nakamura
Photo credit: Genevieve Shiffrar
Congratulations to Emi Nakamura, Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, for winning the 2019 John Bates Clark Medal. The Clark Medal is awarded annually by the American Economic Association to an American economist under age 40 who has made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.
Dr. Nakamura, who won a National Science Foundation CAREER grant in 2011, specializes in macroeconomics, which examines the behavior of entire economies. Her research focuses on how business price setting and government monetary and fiscal policies affect economies. She also develops improved methods for measuring key macroeconomic phenomena, particularly inflation. This research increases our ability to anticipate and reduce the danger of economic recession to U.S. businesses and workers.
In addition to her academic contributions, Dr. Nakamura is a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisors and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Technical Advisory Committee. In these roles, she helps to improve publicly available data on the U.S. economy, which are widely used to inform business decisions.
To learn more about Dr. Nakamura and the John Bates Clark Medal, visit the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal Web page.
Hydrogen from industrial waste, gripping shrinkage, urban heat archipelagos, and shedding ice. It’s 4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn’t Hear About This Week.
Imagine synthetic antibiotics that could fight infections like MRSA, custom pharmaceuticals to treat advanced prostate cancer, and new enzymes that will turn cellulose into fuel...
Leading a team at the NSF-funded Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center at Temple University, psychologist Nora Newcombe found that poor spatial thinking skills may be the reason why some students fall behind in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Spatial thinking, the ability to accurately imagine objects and their relationships as they move through space, contributes to success in various STEM disciplines.
Newcombe’s team discovered that strong spatial thinking ability in children as young as three can predict later success in math. The researchers also learned that spatial skills can be developed in younger children by using familiar toys such as puzzles and blocks. Older children can strengthen spatial thinking by sketching and working with diagrams.
Findings from this work are informing the development of school curricula around the U.S. and in Canada with the goal of helping all students reach their potential in STEM.
How to make a vertebrate from a single cell...[SPOILER ALERT] it takes some math
Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month 2019
Many moving parts go into making an animal, and they all arise from a single cell--a fertilized egg. How this happens is ultimately one of the most fundamental questions in biology. During embryonic development, cells are initially pluripotent, which means they are capable of giving rise to all possible embryonic cell types. Step by step, they become restricted to a specific lineage, which in turn gives rise to complex multi-cellular life.
Animals like humans that have backbones have acquired stem cells over evolutionary history that have allowed us to build on the most basic animal body plans. These cells, neural crest cells, are found only in vertebrates and arose over 500 million years ago. They also specialize during embryonic development, but later than other cell types.
Carole LaBonne of Northwestern University researches the underpinnings of how these cells reach the final fate decisions at the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, using Xenopus embryonic cells. (Much of what we know about early development in vertebrates comes from these African clawed frogs.)
“These cells contribute to tissues as diverse as the craniofacial skeleton, peripheral nervous system, skin pigment cells and the sympathoadrenal glad that gives us our ‘fight or flight' instinct,” LaBonne explained. Understanding more about how neural crest cells arose helps us understand how vertebrates evolved and more complex biological questions such as the origins of congenital disorders.
Mathematics and statistics are also integral to this research; they are needed to better understand the dynamics of complex cell state transitions during development, LaBonne says. “Genome-scale studies, particular at the single cell level, absolutely require math and statistics to reveal the new insights into the underlying biology.”
Understanding more about how genes are regulated in embryonic cells can also help tackle another major issue in biology research: the driving features of cancer cells. There are many similarities between embryonic development and tumor formation and progression at the molecular and cellular levels.
“Neural crest cells, in particular, are a powerful model for understanding cancer, both because they give rise to a number of cancers including melanoma and neuroblastomas, and because the genes that control their migratory and invasive behavior are co-opted by tumor cells undergoing metastasis,” LaBonne explained. “We believe our studies of how embryonic cells make dynamic state transitions during development will lend important insights into the mechanistic underpinnings of analogous state transitions in cancer cells.”
Neurulaxenopus: Neurula stage Xenopus [frog] embryo fluorescently stains for neural crest (red) and central nervous system (green) (Credit: Carole LaBonne) and adult Xenpus (Credit: Brian Gratwicke via Flickr)
Scar-free wound-healing? Mathematics is helping make that a reality
Mathematics & Statistics Awareness Month 2019
That muddled, hairless skin we know as scar tissue that deep wounds leave behind may also be left behind eventually, as a result of NSF-funded research.
A multidisciplinary combination of biologists and mathematicians at the NSF-Simons Center for Multiscale Cell Fate Research at the University of California Irvine seized on a discovery that wound fibroblasts – the most common cells found in connective tissue – have diverse origins, and some are derived from blood cells, called myeloid cells.Their discovery that myeloid cells can be reprogrammed into new fibroblasts and then, further, into new fat cells in wounds is not only novel, but central to achieving scar-free healing, potentially. Along with many local skin cell types, circulating myeloid cells are “drafted” into the wound to help repair it.
“The common way for our skin to repair itself has been with scar tissue,” said Maksim Plikus, an associate professor in developmental and cell biology at University of California Irvine. “Our work, which is driven by mathematical modelling, is helping to shift this paradigm.”
In fact, mathematicians like Center director Qing Nie take biological data from this process known as “cell fate” – how undifferentiated stem cells decide what to become – and convert it into models that indicate likely outcomes. In turn, the biologists then work from these models to build their next experiments. Plikus, Nie and others from the center have thus far identified that adult mice can naturally regenerate nearly normal-looking skin when new hair follicles and fat cells form in healing wounds.(Below: regenerated fat cells in wounds derived from blood cells aka myeloid cells.These cells are genetically marked and stained blue, while non-blood-derived fat cells are transparent.)
“Once we know certain interactions, we can build a mathematical description,” Nie said. “We then explore the model to understand the mechanism. That’s what the ‘Rules of Life’ are all about.”
Plikus added, “We’re learning about the mechanism for why and how different cells communicate, essentially learning the “language” the cells “speak,” so that in the future we can “tell” them our own instructions.”
Now the team needs to look at how the various cells work together and the means of converting blood cells to skin tissue to potentially boost regeneration in the future.
“Typically, biological systems have been studied through experimentation, but it’s slow; researchers spend years working on one hypothesis,” Plikus said. “With mathematical modeling, we can examine all players simultaneously and without bias, providing predictions for the best outcomes. It allows biologists to narrow down work, speeding up the process, but also making it less biased.”
And it’s not just the biologists who are winners in this equation. “The research has produced impacts on the math side too,” Nie said. “This is multi-scale mathematics. New mathematics is often inspired by the complexity we are learning from biological systems.”
One final plus: this group is not only advancing research but the next generation of researchers.
“The center has afforded an opportunity for cross-disciplinary training for younger researchers, often from underrepresented groups,” Nie said. “We now have an experimentalist post doc with computational experience as a result of the opportunities this research provided.”
Understanding the Brain: The smell of a fruit fly, a clue to the brain
Fruit flies come out of nowhere, seemingly able to magically sniff out ripe fruit on a kitchen counter.
Now it seems those same “olfactory sensory neurons” – even in fruit fly larvae – are helping shed light not only on this system within fruit flies, but, because of surprising similarities, across invertebrates and vertebrates including humans.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Harvard University biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel and his team developed an experiment with Drosophila melanogaster larva because of its simple and limited number of olfactory sensory neurons. Drosophila have just 21 of these neuron types compared to the hundreds of types in humans and other vertebrates. And the Drosophila larva has almost no redundancy, just one neuron of each type, not the tens or thousands of each type that might appear in adult insects or vertebrates. With such a small olfactory circuit, even the 1-millimeter-long larva can effectively scoot around foraging for food by using its sense of smell. This sets the stage for the team’s most recent endeavors.
“The larva presents a unique opportunity as a model for olfaction,” Samuel said. “Vast numbers of olfactory patterns can be encoded in even a small circuit. But with the larva, we can conceivably get a complete look at this encoding that spans the input space – layer by layer from sensory neurons to the brain – and uncover basic principles of information processing.”
Samuel and his team developed a high-precision odor delivery device (olfactometer) to emit 34 basic odors in varying concentrations representative of the chemicals emitted by fruits commonly found in the larvae’s habitat. The team simultaneously imaged the olfactory neuron activity to identify patterns in how the neurons react to different stimulus smells. Ultimately, the researchers observed how responses to 690 odor permutations across smells and concentrations are mapped to the activity of the 21 sensory neurons.
“We were actually surprised by how much we were able to learn from just sensory neurons,” Samuel said. “The olfactory code has never before been mapped out to this depth or resolution, and this deep understanding of the periphery will guide us towards understanding deeper layers of processing in larva and other animals.”
Samuel notes that the data collected will likely be “inspiring” to computational theorists who develop predictive algorithms.
“Anytime you smell something, you bring a complex mixture of all sorts of molecules into your nose,” Samuel said. “The brain has to disentangle these inputs, and algorithms that can effectively do that are fascinating from a mathematical point of view.”
Photo credits: André Karwath via Flickr; RickP via Wikimedia Commons; Jess Kanwal, Samuel Lab
