Marta Shore and Sarah Samorodnitsky, University of Minnesota
As new Minnesota high-school science standards encouraged having students discover phenomena for themselves through data, teachers at Coon Rapids High School and Saint Paul Public Schools reached out to Marta Shore and Sarah Samorodnitsky at the University of Minnesota for help creating lessons in interpreting data. Shore and Samorodnitsky saw an opportunity to help students see statistical analysis as relevant to their lives, which would better promote statistics as a future career, and jumped on it.
They spearheaded the University of Minnesota’s Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement Committee and created the following two collaborations that illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the committee and local schools.
Coon Rapids High School, Coon Rapids, Minnesota
During the early days of COVID, Coon Rapids High School teachers Ann and Luke Gliddon were pondering ways for students to learn about biomedical research remotely. They came up with the idea of having students use The Islands, a virtual world, to conduct simulated clinical research and asked Shore and Samorodnitsky to help with study design. Shore and Samorodnitsky then recruited biostatistics graduate students from the Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement Committee to serve as statistical consultants.
I can’t overstate the impact of having an adult expert and role model interested in these students and their projects.
The consultants were asked to meet with students to discuss their ideas, answer their questions, and review their proposals. After the high-school students collected data via The Islands and performed the analysis, the consultants were invited to give feedback on the students’ final presentations.
Ann and Luke were not only interested in the technical knowledge the graduate students had, but hoped the partnership would provide an opportunity for their students to see themselves as future graduate students pursuing a career in biomedical and public health research.
Shore and Samorodnitsky have now collaborated with Ann and Luke’s class for three years, and Ann and Luke have consistently shared the importance of having outside professionals take an interest in their students’ work. “I can’t overstate the impact of having an adult expert and role model interested in these students and their projects,” said Ann. “Many of our students will be first-generation college students, and they may not have met a graduate student before. They were so fascinated by the idea that you were volunteering to work with them and not being paid—or getting extra credit!”
“Now they know a biostatistician,” Ann continued. “They know what that term means. They are more data literate and hopefully are more able to sort out some truth from data.”
Saint Paul Public Schools
Saint Paul Public Schools became one of the Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement Committee’s early collaborators. SPPS is one of the most diverse school districts in Minnesota in terms of race, ethnicity, languages spoken at home, and socioeconomic status. In 2020, SPPS launched an initiative that focused on incorporating career pathways into courses to make learning relevant and practical for students. SPPS was interested in educational materials that illustrate biostatistics as a future career.
The committee’s first project was a collaboration with Earth science teachers who wanted to meet new state science standards on data exploration with educational materials that incorporated local data relevant to students’ lives. Graduate student members of the committee developed an R Shiny app with the teachers that allowed users to explore Minnesota air quality data.
Committee members met with teachers frequently to understand their needs, receive feedback, and ask questions about the design and functionality of the app. The final product included the previous five years of air monitoring data and allowed students to explore how air quality (PM2.5, AQI) changes due to both natural and man-made phenomena. One of the local air quality monitoring stations was even located at an SPPS high school.
Since its launch, the app has been used in several SPPS classes and allowed students to ask questions and form hypotheses about what affects the air quality in their environment. Students have been able to relate national news and local events to local air quality trends. Furthermore, the app design has given students the power to choose what to analyze, and the app explains the results in plain language. Not only do students see what statisticians and data scientists can create, they can see themselves asking questions and finding answers in data.
Mission Accomplished
Shore and Samorodnitsky’s goal when establishing a biostatistics outreach committee was to spread awareness of biostatistics as a career to students in and near the Twin Cities. Local public schools wanted to create long-term partnerships to improve curriculum and incorporate career pathways into learning. The relationship between the committee and schools allows for collaborations that spread biostatistics awareness and improve data science literacy among high-school students, while improving curriculum and incorporating career pathways into lessons.
Learn more about the University of Minnesota’s Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement Committee. Questions can be emailed to Shore.
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