NORTHRIDGE : Project Promoting Science Given Grant

Cal State Northridge’s biology department has received a state grant of $140,000 for the third year of a project aimed at encouraging minority schoolchildren to choose careers in science.

The project, Elementary Science Leaders, trains selected teachers to instruct colleagues on how to improve science education, said Steven Oppenheimer, CSUN biology professor and the project’s director.

“Many elementary school teachers do not have strong science backgrounds, consequently very little science is taught at a time when it is most important,” Oppenheimer said.

So far, the project has received $446,200 from the Eisenhower Grant program of the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

After two years, Oppenheimer said, the amount of time spent teaching science in the classrooms involved in the project has doubled.

Two to three teachers are selected from each of the 20 elementary and three middle schools participating in the project. They are trained in workshops at their schools. About 100 teachers are now involved, Oppenheimer said.

He said schools in the project have a majority of minority students because “data indicates that very few of these children go into science research as a career. Fewer American students as a whole are becoming research scientists, and it is important to concentrate on minority students who will make up the future work force.”