Three projects at the School of Education and Social Policy have been funded by the stimulus package President Obama signed into law in 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included investment in research for improving schools, infrastructures and technology to lay the foundation for an economic recovery, and SESP has joined in this major effort.
SESP's most recent stimulus package award went to associate professor Emma Adam for a study of the effects of racial/ethnic discrimination on physical health. Crossing the borders between psychology and biomedicine, Adam is examining the interplay between stress and health, especially by observing how social experiences relate to levels of the hormone cortisol and other biomarkers of stress and health.
This project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on the effects of patterns of discrimination as they relate to physiological indicators of health risks. "How does a history of discrimination relate to stress markers?" Adam asks. She will supervise collection of biological data on stress and pre-disease markers among middle-income African American and European American families in a Maryland community, correlating physiological data with current daily experiences as well as past histories of race-based social stress collected over an 18-year period.
Last summer research associate professor Kemi Jona began a summer fellowship program with stimulus funding from the National Cancer Institute. The Oncofertility summer program supports undergraduate students along their trajectory toward science or health-related research careers and enables high school biology teachers to develop their hands-on research skills.
The students gain valuable research experience, and teachers translate their cutting-edge research experience into lab activities that will be made available for teachers around the country. The funding supports four full-time paid summer positions — two for undergraduate students, two for teachers — each year for two years. The internship program, which is part of a major Northwestern project to increase reproductive options for cancer patients, will continue next summer.
Another stimulus package project aimed at training teachers will increase the knowledge and skills of Chicago science and mathematics teachers. Research associate professor Steven McGee is collaborating with others to plan Chicago Transformation Teacher Institutes, funded by the National Science Foundation, for teachers in leadership positions in Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
These institutes will draw on SESP's decade of experience in developing successful environmental and geoscience curriculum and providing professional development for teachers. SESP is creating these four teacher courses closely integrated with the CPS High School Transformation program:
- Energy in the earth system
- Life and environmental systems
- Detection and analysis in life and environmental science
- Deep knowledge of life and environmental science and teaching of science
In addition, Illinois Institute of Technology will provide two courses and one workshop that comprise the other half of the course work for the teacher leader strand in environmental and life science:
- Integrated life and environmental systems
- Investigating pedagogical content knowledge in life and environmental science
- Workshop on incorporating new science content into high school programs
After the curriculum for these courses is developed, institutes for the first cohort of teachers will begin in 2011.
Northwestern is collaborating with Illinois Institute of Technology, CPS, and other university and curriculum development partners in the project. At Northwestern, McGee will work with Kimberly Gray, director of the environmental sciences program and professor of civil and environmental engineering, to supervise the design and delivery of the teacher courses. They will provide expertise regarding content and curriculum as well as integration of the program within the larger context of environmental science studies and geoscience curriculum projects at Northwestern.
Photo: Emma Adam analyzes physiological samples for a research project examining the interplay between stress and health.