STRAIGHT TO THE TOP - North Carolina A&T State University

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Youth and Science
Last fall, nearly 270 Guilford County fifthgrade
students came to the Alumni-Foundation
Event Center on A&T’s campus to participate in
a three-part, 4-H National Youth Science Day
experiment on water quality – an experiment that
was created by A&T scientists from across three
disciplines and schools. The local children were
part of an international corral that also conducted
the A&T-created experiment on the same day:
3,000 North Carolina students as well as youth
in 46 other states and U.S. territories, and at
such international U.S. military bases as those in
Antarctica and South Korea.
Any way you look at them, the statistics on science
achievement are disturbing. Only one in five
American high school seniors is skilled in science,
according to a science assessment exam. Or put
another way, a whopping 80 percent of American
high school seniors do not have a good grasp of
science skills. It’s no longer a question of whether
the beaker is half empty or half full; the hard truth
is that the beaker is close to empty.
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
State University is among the first landgrant
universities that competed to design
the experiment and is the first land-grant
HBCU to win the competition. In addition
to the honor of winning, A&T’s status as
the experiment designer also allows the
university’s logo to appear on national and
international marketing materials.
4-H is winning formula for STEM-focused nation
By Cathy Gant Hill
Writer, Cooperative Extension Program
Last fall, nearly 270 Guilford
County fifth-grade students
came to the Alumni-Foundation
Event Center on A&T’s campus
to participate in a three-part,
4-H National Youth Science Day
experiment on water quality.
The prognosticators are nervous.
From where the big thinkers sit, the fate of our nation
rests in classrooms where students are woefully
unprepared and uninterested in science-based careers.
America’s future as a scientific and technological
powerhouse promises to be bleak and dependent
unless a drastic and sustained change is made,
scientists fear.
“Everyone knows that across the nation, we’re falling
behind other countries for science, technology,
engineering and mathematics,” says Stephanie
Luster-Teasley, an assistant professor in the College
of Engineering and a 1996 alumna of North Carolina
A&T State University. “This is especially true for
women and minorities. We’re not seeing the numbers
going into those fields from this demographic.”
Luster-Teasley is part of a national cadre of scientists,
educators and specialists pushing for the type of
drastic change that will restore the United States’
scientific edge. Additionally, there is an all-out effort
from 4-H to prepare at least one million new schoolage
children to excel in science by 2013, and N.C. A&T
is an active participant in that campaign.
Results from the 2009 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) show that only
34 percent of fourth-grade, 30 percent of eighthgrade
and 21 percent of 12th-grade students are
proficient and above in science. Although the
statistics are an improvement from 2005 scores,
they are still low enough that U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan worries about the country’s
global competitiveness.
“When (only) 1 or 2 percent of children score at the
advanced levels on NAEP, the next generation will
not be ready to be world-class inventors, doctors
and engineers,” Duncan has said.
This descending academic slope portends a less
than stellar future for American technological
advancement, except that there are rallying
movements to fix the problem.
Enter 4-H, which at six million adolescents is
the largest youth organization in the country. To
help meet its goal of preparing a million students
to excel in science-based fields by 2013, 4-H
established the annual National Youth Science Day
and a companion science experiment. After the
first experiment in 2008, the organization then
invited land-grant universities around the country
to compete for the honor of creating the country’s
leading experiment for young people.
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