Contact: Maridith Geuder
When she returns to her Noxubee County High School classes in the fall, chemistry teacher Shirley Granger may not have new equipment but she will have a host of new ideas.
Granger is the only high school teacher in Mississippi participating in a National Science Foundation-funded summer research program at nearby Mississippi State University. The 10-week Research Experiences for Undergraduates allows college students to work with and learn techniques from practicing researchers.
Granger was selected on the basis of her application, said program co-director Judith L. Eglin. Supporting Granger were letters written by her students at the Macon school, along with those of Principal Minnie S. Washington and Superintendent of Education Kevin Jones.
The materials Granger develops will be used in her classroom this fall to make the study of chemistry more interesting, said Bill Henry, the other co-director.
Now in its fifth year at the Starkville campus, the 1998 REU program includes students from colleges and universities in Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the island of Puerto Rico. An initial goal of the program is to familiarize participants with the demands of laboratory research and the specialized equipment needed to complete the work.
For Granger, the opportunity to study alongside college-age researchers is providing new insights that she'll take back to the classroom.
"I'm learning to design a web page about the research activities," she said. "I'll also be videotaping experiments so that I can share them with my students. At the end of this program, I'll be familiar with many new techniques."
Some of her students will benefit immediately.
"During the last week of the program in late July, I'll bring some of my students to campus to interact with the college students," Granger said. "This is definitely a learning experience for us all."
Henry said the visit by Granger's students "will introduce to them the idea that students not much older than themselves can effectively perform research."
Granger said the college-age members in her program have been generous in sharing their time and ideas.
"They let me help them with some experiments and I get to experience what a modern laboratory is like," she said. "I'm getting exposed to new methodologies and new equipment that can benefit my students.
"The college students also are sharing ideas with me, simple things that might help my students," Granger added. "I'm incorporating many of them into my school's objectives."
Eglin and Henry say they are hopeful that materials developed by Granger also can benefit other high school chemistry teachers in the future.
"We will encourage other teachers to contact Shirley as a resource," Eglin said.