Highlight
Trainee Meredith Berthelson's IGERT training includes outreach to Native American communities.
Achievement/Results
MEID-IGERT Trainee Meredith Berthelson is pursuing her Ph.D. at the interface of math, biology and secondary education. She was a math instructor at Blackfeet Community College in Montana before coming to the University of Montana to participate in the MEID-IGERT program.
As a Native American Ph.D. candidate, she is deeply interested in enhancing participation by young Native Americans and other underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and careers. This past year, as both a required outreach activity and as part of her own training, Meredith participated in the “Native American Astrobiology in the Secondary Classroom” initiative. This NASA-funded program is designed to engage Native American secondary school students at reservation schools into STEM activities at a young age in to hopefully attract them to study and work in these areas later in life.
In Montana, Blackfeet reservation and Flathead Reservation high schools were participants in this initiative. The program was designed to examine whether topics in Astrobiology are an effective way to motivate and generate interest in the sciences among underserved groups in the U.S. Meredith used data collected from this program as part of her recently awarded M.S. degree thesis in the Master’s of Interdisciplinary Studies program at The University of Montana. Meredith also gave a poster presentation regarding this project at the 2010 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) in Texas in April.
As part of her Ph.D. studies, Meredith is combining her interest in biological sciences with her interest in mathematical sciences and math education and science by pursuing a project to model virus-host interactions in hyperthermophilic environments at Yellowtone National Park an elsewhere. She will go on to use the knowledge and expertise that she gains in the laboratory environment to help secondary school teachers develop exciting and motivating curricula in the STEM disciplines for K-12 students.
Address Goals
Meredith Berthelson’s outreach in exposing high school students on Native American reservations in Montana to cutting edge knowledge in Astrobiology and to the STEM disciplines in general provides an example of how enhancing representation and participation by underserved groups in the STEM disciplines is an important component of our IGERT program.
