Project GUTS aims to engage middle school students in place-based research projects that promote an understanding of complex systems and elucidate the use of computer modeling in scientific research. Specifically, our goals are to:

• Attract diverse student bodies and learning styles to Project GUTS through targeted recruitment, and by providing relevant content, a comfortable context, and program flexibility.
• Prepare students for careers in STEM fields by developing fluency with complex systems concepts and advanced computational tools and techniques to experiment, manipulate, visualize and interpret data.
• Retain students in STEM disciplines by constructing a pipeline that supports students from middle to high school as young scientists.
• Assess how teachers’ participation in Project GUTS as after school club leaders impacts how they think about and teach STEM in their classrooms.
• Enhance existing partnerships for program sustainability.

Our target audience consists of 200 middle school students (grades 6-8) and 40 teachers from public, private and charter schools in and around Santa Fe, NM. We are targeting high-need students from underrepresented groups and accommodating English language learners.

Project GUTS draws on experiences and material from the successful New Mexico Adventures in Modeling (AIM) program developed by the Santa Fe Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The AIM program is funded by the National Science Foundation. Adventures in Modeling introduced over 400 high school students and teachers to the concepts of modeling and simulation of complex systems using a computer modeling tool called StarLogo. The Santa Fe Public School district and local independent schools have partnered with the AIM project over the past three years. In addition, the AIM program has worked closely with the New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge. The programs have overlapping goals, participant teachers, and interested students and are united by the use of StarLogo as the principal agent-based modeling language.