STEM Education Highlights

Whitaker Center STEM Education Highlight

GEMS is a hands-on program dedicated to science education for regional middle-school girls by enthusiastic professionals, undergraduate and graduate students as facilitators and role models in a girls-only environment. GEMS conferences occur in the Fall and Spring semesters and in the summer. Middle-school girls come to the FGCU campus and spend the day immersed in activities guided by faculty and FGCU student facilitators. Activities have included bioengineering, chemistry, biological science, biotechnology, forensics, astronomy, math, civil engineering, and environmental science. The participants enjoy working with the FGCU students and by design the positive experiences go both ways. It is exciting to watch women of all ages come together and work together engaging in engineering, math and science activities. We all reap the benefits.

GEMS provides a launching pad to develop an early interest in engineering, math, and science as an impetus to higher education and highly-skilled careers. Because women are greatly under-represented in these fields, girls are a pool of human resources that should be developed and mentored to help alleviate the scientist and engineer shortage and bring greater gender equity to these areas. The technological and scientific achievements of the past decade and those projected for the future have created a heightened need for a scientifically and technologically literate workforce at a time when too few people are available for these positions. These nationwide concerns are apparent in Southwest Florida with a shortage in the fields of engineering, health professions, and math and science middle and high school teachers.

The Whitaker Center will be assisting in the sponsorship of the GEMS Girls Scout Adventure in Spring 2009.

SRO (Student Research Opportunity)

Students participating in the Regional Science Fair are chosen to participate in a Summer Research Opportunity at Florida Gulf Coast University offering them a hands-on experience of collaboration on a complete and genuine research problem from hypothesis generation and initial design, through field and laboratory data collection, and culminating in data analysis and interpretation.  The program is sponsored by the Whitaker Center and is staffed by FGCU faculty and Graduate Student Assistants. 

Whitaker Center Summer Institute

Institute Outcomes & Products:
Teachers will acquire . . .

• Skills in curricular planning for science and math that emphasize “essential understanding.”
• Skills that promote and engage students in active learning in science, math, and literacy
• A methodology that integrates literacy and math training into a science curriculum
• A curricular content background in science topics of their choosing.

At completion of the institute, teachers will retain the following products:

• Integrated curricular packages that fulfill State Standards in science, math, and literacy.
• Curricular packages will be shared among all participants and be available to other teachers at the participating elementary schools.
• A network of teachers interested in science and math education at the elementary school level and science education professionals from the Whitaker Center.  This network will be called upon during the subsequent academic year to assess the effectiveness of this approach to science education.