Middle schoolers interested in science, technology, engineering, and math are getting a special opportunity thanks to an SFI program offered through Santa Fe public schools.
Project GUTS — Growing Up Thinking Scientifically — is a summer and after-school educational program that encourages students to look at the world beyond their everyday levels of awareness, ask questions, and develop solutions through scientific inquiry.
The program is free and open to any student entering the seventh or eighth grade who wants to engage in scientific inquiry by investigating topics of interest to their local communities — called place-based inquiry.
Some 52 middle school students participated this summer, and ve high school students participated as student mentors.
The program was conceived by SFI educator Irene Lee in the late ‘90s after a stint as organizing manager for SFI’s Swarm Program and her participation in an Adventures in Modeling (AIM) workshop offered by SFI Science Board member Eric Klopfer of MIT. Like AIM, Project GUTS includes a focus on modeling and simulation of complex systems using the computer modeling program StarLogo.
“I was struck by the intuitiveness of programming in StarLogo and found my niche working with middle and high school teachers and their students,” Irene says.
Project GUTS partners with the Supercomputing Challenge, which is aimed at high school students, and, Irene says, “We encourage our middle school students to continue on to the Challenge once they reach high school.”
Other Project GUTS collaborators include MIT, New Mexico Tech, the Santa Fe Public School district, Santa Fe independent schools, science-related local businesses, and local science centers. Project GUTS is funded by an NSF Academies for Young Scientists grant, and by private donors.