San Francisco State University - SF ROCKS

Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco.

Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco (SF-ROCKS), a program at San Francisco State University, aims to connect urban youth with earth, environmental and atmospheric sciences through hands on investigations with San Francisco State University Geoscience faculty and curriculum development for the 9th grade science classroom. It is the goal of SF-ROCKS that through these efforts, a greater diversity of students will enter college in the earth and environmental sciences.

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Started in 2001 through a National Science Foundation "Opportunities to Enhance Diversity in the Geosciences" program grant, SF-ROCKS reaches out to high school students in the southeast corridor of San Francisco - a region of San Francisco known for its long history of environmental injustice. The original focus was to introduce the geosciences to high school classrooms through local watershed investigations -- coupling the human history of industrialization in the region with the impact on the environment was the strategy to impassion urban young people into environmentalism through a scientific perspective. Introducing young people to earth processes and environmental investigations imparts appreciation and stewardship toward the environment as well as a perspective on environmental injustice.

SF-ROCKS has four main programming components to engage students into the earth sciences:

SUMMER RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Each summer students from classrooms using SF-ROCKS curriculum are chosen to participate in a 2-3 week summer research institute. The institute begins with activities designed to introduce the scientific method, scientific inquiry, and data collection using a variety of techniques. Most of the research projects are field-based and provide students with opportunities to review and explore earth and environmental science topics they were exposed to through the SF-ROCKS lesson plans in their 9th grade science courses. Each group is led by an SFSU Geosciences Department faculty or graduate student who selects a locally relevant research topic.

PRESENTING RESEARCH
The culmination of the SF-ROCKS research projects for the high school students are presented in a scientific poster format at the American Geophysical Union conference held every December at Moscone Center in downtown San Fracisco. Students participate in a special high school science session at AGU, entitled "Bright STARS" (Students Training as Research Scientists).

PARTNERSHIP WITH SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
A core component of SF-ROCKS is a series of 15 lesson plans (available via the world wide web), tied to California's state science standards, that encourage teachers to supplement their existing 9th-grade interdisciplinary science course curriculum with the educational materials and activities that we have developed. By focusing on the unique watershed environments that surround their school, students learn how earth science concepts apply to their own neighborhood. Lesson plans include elements such as constructing watershed and topographic models, chemical components such as pH, and investigating the hydrogeology of watersheds as well as the meteorology of the Bay Area.

NATIONAL PARKS INSTRUCTIONAL TOUR
During the beginning of the summer, SF-ROCKS takes a subset of Summer Institute Students on a tour of National Parks in the western United States. Students have the opportunity, for the first time in their lives to camp, backpack, appreciate nature, and see the stars. The program is modeled after a long standing project at the University of New Orleans and SF-ROCKS is now collaborating to bring together students from both regions of the country in to the field to view geology and earth processes.