West Chester University program wants to get students from under-resourced communities interested in STEM
At Central High School, a physics professor offered a lesson on photonics.
![Central High School Junior Mohamed Bashir, works on STEM project during at after school program led by West Chester professor Brandon Mitchell.](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/v2/WX3QAJLJGBHPXIDBUQ7U6KYKHA.jpg?auth=0c81502f2552ddcfc1808cbb824c9d573c160af17a3405aed00d0a322963ca9f&width=760&height=507&smart=true)
West Chester University physics professor Brandon Mitchell readied the equipment in front of him, which he likened to an adult set of Legos.
“This is a bunch of parts and components that you play with to get light to do something,” he said of the system of mirrors, lenses, and irises.
The lesson was on photonics: how to manipulate light to get it, for example, to transmit music from an MP3 player to a speaker through the air, which he demonstrated.
» READ MORE: Penn State is pushing for more diversity among STEM scholars
At Central High School in Philadelphia one recent afternoon, several students tried Mitchell’s task, attempting to maneuver a laser precisely through two small pinholes placed at a certain angle on a black metal board.
“We’re so close,” said a determined Linda Kamal, 15, a 10th grader, as she fiddled with the mirrors.
“That feeling of you almost got it — that’s science to a T there,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell runs the Center For STEM Inclusion at the state university with the goal of bringing more students from under-resourced, low-income communities into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Some efforts involve bringing middle and high school students onto campus for hands-on activities and panels with educators and STEM professionals from business partners including Deloitte, a financial firm, and United Safety & Survivability Corp., an Exton-based company that makes seats for airplanes and trains.
Other efforts entail visiting students at their home schools, as Mitchell did earlier this month at Central, one of Philadelphia’s magnet high schools. West Chester is partnering with groups including Heights Philadelphia, a nonprofit that helps students get into and through college, to establish relationships in the schools.
The center serves about 2,500 students a year from the five-county area, Mitchell said, with 300 of those students participating in multiple events annually, allowing educators to get to know the students and follow up. Some students have wound up enrolling at West Chester, though the program is not targeted at recruitment, and instructors are not pitching West Chester, he said. Still, the university has gone from 20 freshman physics majors before the program started in 2021 to 48 this year, he said.
The effort began after West Chester got a $1 million grant to support students from low-income families pursuing a career in STEM. Interest among girls and lower-income students tends to wane in eighth and ninth grades, he said. Students often do not have STEM professionals in their families and cannot see the economic sense in pursuing such a career, he said.
The center initially targeted those middle grades but has since expanded to lower grades and high school, too, for continuity, he said.
Several students who participated have since started their own clubs at their schools, he said. At Masterman, another Philadelphia magnet, Laila Butts, 16, a junior who participated in STEM programs at West Chester, helped to start the “Science Thursdays” club in which Butts and some classmates conduct experiments and competitions with fifth graders, encouraging them to pursue STEM.
“I wanted to show kids that there was more to science than just in the classroom and talking and that it could be applied in real life,” Butts said.
At recent club meetings, students built paper airplanes to try out aerodynamics and made towers out of marshmallows and Popsicle sticks to see which would be the tallest and stay up the longest, Butts said.
“They were very competitive,” said Butts, who aspires to be a mechanical engineer.
Jeremy Heyman, Heights’ director of STEM Pathways, said the organization is grateful for the partnership.
“It continues to be helpful for a growing number of our students, helping to build their network and social capital,” said Heyman, whose group also works with Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. “We’re really focused on expanding access and opportunity in STEM fields.”
Mohamed Bashir, 16, an 11th grader at Central, said he signed up for the program at his school because he enjoys hands-on STEM activities.
“I really wanted to explore my passion,” he said. “I feel like things like this really help me explore what I’m interested in.”
He participated in a STEM-based research internship at West Chester last summer.
“It really made me want to go to West Chester,” he said.
Kamal was one of a handful of students who turned out for the Central program on an unusually cold January day that organizers thought kept some away. She said she saw an email about the program and already participates in a club at Central — Girls Empowerment Mind and STEM, GEMS for short.
“There are a lot of schools that are underfunded, and they don’t get the opportunities like these,” she said. “So whenever I see an opportunity, I like to take advantage of it.”