Establishing an Interdisciplinary Outreach Program at the Interface of

Chapter 5

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Establishing an Interdisciplinary Outreach Program at the Interface of Biology, Chemistry, and Materials Science Jeffery A. Byers,* Eranthie Weerapana, and Abhishek Chatterjee Department of Chemistry, Boston College, 2609 Beacon Street, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02458, United States *E-mail: [email protected].

The unique challenges, advantages, and disadvantages of establishing an interdisciplinary outreach program for high school students as opposed to an outreach program that is dedicated to one discipline is described. Using the Paper to Plastics (P2P) program as an example, this chapter describes multiple challenges that were encountered when establishing an interdisciplinary research program including choosing an appropriate topic, designing a program that interfaces with multiple disciplines, and establishing an active learning environment that is engaging for high school aged students. Techniques used to enhance the student’s experiences, such as involving students in genuine research environments, using undergraduate students to mentor the high school students, and creating an interdisciplinary program that is collaborative rather than topical are described.

Introduction With the increasing need for more employees in many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields (1, 2), it is important now more than ever to explore different approaches to developing outreach programs designed to encourage participation in these essential fields. This need is especially important for attracting women and under-represented minorities to STEM disciplines, which are populations that remain vastly under-represented at the highest levels in academia and industry (3, 4). © 2017 American Chemical Society Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


To address low graduation rates for all American students in STEM disciplines, the National Academy of Science (NAS) has recommended that a key aspect of a successful educational program must include crosscutting concepts involving multiple scientific disciplines (5). Coupled with similar ideas that pervade the modern scientific psyche, this recommendation has led to a concerted effort directed towards establishing outreach programs that have an interdisciplinary component, some of which can be found with the following references (6–10). As is the case with multidisciplinary research efforts, establishing an interdisciplinary, outreach program requires involvement from experts with different scientific backgrounds. Along with the organizational challenges that are usually associated with such efforts, establishing a collaborative outreach program has unique problems that interdisciplinary research programs do not face. Such differences were not apparently obvious to us when we set out to establish our own interdisciplinary, outreach program. In this chapter, we recount our experiences with setting up an interdisciplinary outreach program for high school students called the Paper to Plastics (P2P) program as well as a spinoff program called You Evolve a Protein! (YEP!). Using these programs as examples, we will outline how we chose a multidisciplinary topic for the program that met our pedagogical goals, the organizational challenges that we faced, the necessary timeline needed to be thorough yet accommodating to the modern lifestyle of teenagers, our efforts to recruit students, and our efforts devoted to assessing the efficacy of the program. It is our hope that relaying these experiences will help others as they establish their own interdisciplinary outreach programs and will stimulate further conversation about the appropriate demonstration of interdisciplinary efforts and their efficacy in encouraging students to pursue careers in STEM fields.

Overview of the Paper to Plastics (P2P) Program It is not the intent of this book chapter to describe the scientific goals of our program in detail, which we have done elsewhere (11). Instead, we will use our experiences with the P2P program as an entry point to discuss important considerations that we were not fully aware of but became acutely aware of during establishing and implementing our program. Therefore, to provide context for the ensuing discussion, it is appropriate to first describe the program that we created. P2P is an interdisciplinary program that aims to involve students in an environment that mimics a genuine research setting where the goal is to convert unwanted office waste paper to the biodegradable polymer, poly(lactic acid). This process can be accomplished in five steps using a combination of biological and chemical techniques (see Figure 1) (12–16). High school students participate in a four-week program that takes place in the Department of Chemistry at Boston College twice each summer, once in July and once in August. In this time period, small groups (3-4) of high school students work closely with an undergraduate student who serves a dual purpose as a mentor to guide them through the technical aspects of the program and as a role model that can influence students to seriously 52

Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


consider careers in science and technology. In order to maximize participation and minimize space requirements, two sessions of the P2P program are held each month, one that takes place on Mondays and Wednesdays and another that takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thus, each participant in the P2P program attends eight sessions through the course of a month, which is enough time for him or her to complete the program (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. Outline of scientific goals of the “Paper to Plastics” program. Inherent to the P2P program is the communication between chemistry and biology. With help from each professor who serve as experts in biochemistry, organic chemistry, and polymer chemistry, students learn firsthand how chemistry and biology interact to form useful materials from waste. Students combine biological techniques, such as enzymatic digestion and fermentation, with chemical techniques, such as distillation, catalysis, and polymerization to convert unwanted office paper into the useful biodegradable polymer poly(lactic acid). Since the ultimate goal of the research activities is to synthesize a biodegradable polymer, the students learn how their scientific interests can be used to address important social problems, which our experience has shown is an important component of the program. Alumni of the P2P program are invited to participate in a spinoff of the program called "You Evolve a Protein!" (YEP!), which occurs in a second summer and is more experimental in its goals. Since participants in YEP! have some exposure to the lab setting obtained in P2P, students who participate in YEP! are more comfortable in the laboratory setting and are therefore better equipped to undertake a project that has less certain outcomes. In this month long project, students use directed evolution to synthesize novel green fluorescent proteins. While this project is not interdisciplinary, it provides an active learning environment that is governed by hypothesis driven decisions that are commonly employed in scientific research. 53



The P2P and YEP! programs provide opportunities for high school aged students to interact with peers that have similar interests, thereby providing an example counter to what is typically valued at this formative age (4). Encouragement from undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty members further builds confidence. It has been our experience that these programs provide a valuable support network amongst peers that will help foster the budding interests of students as they consider their post secondary education options. Moreover, by working closely with other members of similar ethnicity, gender, and/or socioeconomic backgrounds, it is our belief that students will build a level of camaraderie and self confidence that will serve to inspire students rather than deter them from pursuing careers in STEM fields. Given this advantage, we have targeted the program towards recruiting demographic groups that are under represented in STEM fields.

Figure 2. Statistics obtained from exit surveys of the P2P program. The P2P program recently completed its fifth year of existence, which has made it possible to use anonymous exit surveys as a qualitative measure of its efficacy (Figure 2). The program has had 51 participants, and has historically been comprised predominately of female students (82%). The program has had a limited number of minority students, which is an area that we look to improve in the future. Feedback has been extremely positive with 88% rating it as overall a very good or excellent program. It was clear from the comments that the overwhelming majority 54 Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

of the students said they obtained a better understanding about how research is carried out and how challenging and rewarding science can be. Students were also energized by their experience with the specialized equipment they were exposed to during the program. The overwhelming majority of participants (96%) said they would recommend the program to their peers. The second year of the program (YEP!), which takes a much more experimental stance, is still in its infancy but informal feedback from this experience has also been overall good.


Organizing an Interdisciplinary Outreach Program Based on our experiences with the P2P and YEP! programs, the most important part of establishing an outreach program is deciding what the topic will be and how the program will be organized. Many factors are important: pedagogical efficacy (i.e., effectiveness in achieving the teaching goals), length of the program, timing of the program, time commitment needed from the principle investigator(s) and members of his/her research team, space requirements, recruiting, and long-term implementation strategies. Figure 3 illustrates the workflow that we went through when establishing and carrying out the P2P program. Each of these sections will be discussed in succession.

Figure 3. Workflow for the P2P Program. Choosing Collaborators Identifying collaborators that are suitable for an interdisciplinary project is an important and sometimes surprisingly difficult task. What we found to be more important than having common themed research programs was to find faculty members that shared a common vision for the expected outcomes of the program. Once the vision was established, faculty members could find ways to adapt what 55 Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


their research group is good at doing in the spirit of creating an effective outreach program. Such flexibility makes establishing a productive program easier, but it can make it more challenging to justify to funding agencies that require significant overlap between outreach programs and faculty member’s research programs. While this is certainly a concern that can be difficult to address, we hope that the success of programs such as the P2P program will ease these requirements. When we established our outreach program(s), there were several goals that we wanted to achieve: (1) introduce students to a genuine scientific research environment to promote the advantages of pursuing careers in science, engineering, and technology; (2) demonstrate how scientific problems can be addressed effectively from a multidisciplinary approach; (3) provide a concrete example of how science and technology can be used to address problems with social significance; (4) provide an opportunity for high school students to interact with undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors in order to foster open discourse about pursuing higher education and the value of science degrees and careers in science and technology; and (5) develop leadership and mentoring skills among undergraduate mentors who are considering careers in science, engineering, or technology. It is our belief that the number of faculty members that can be involved in the program is limited only by the number that share the same vision. In such an instance, full and continued commitment to the program is more likely from all faculty members. Nevertheless, to keep the program from loosing specific focus, it is probably best to limit the number of faculty participants to 2-4.

Choosing the Type of Program A key objective for our program was to demonstrate how a multidisciplinary approach is good for solving problems with significant social importance. Central to this objective was how the program was going to be organized. After considering how other multidisciplinary outreach programs were organized (6–10), we came to the conclusion that there are two types (Table 1): 1) programs that share a common theme viewed from multiple, interdisciplinary perspectives but whose scientific goals do not necessarily overlap nor depend on each other (6–8), and 2) programs that are collaborative in a way that requires cooperation from multiple disciplines to achieve the ultimate scientific goal (9, 10). The former type of program is attractive because a common theme can be established that is very broad (e.g. energy) so that multiple projects can be developed using the topic as an umbrella to work under. This type of program provides enormous freedom for the principle investigators because they can choose projects that are closely in line with their own research interests but not dependent on the interests and goals of other principle investigators involved in the program. Organization of these programs is also less constrictive because each principle investigator can work independently of each other. On the other hand, these programs sometimes lack continuity between the different components, and it is sometimes not obvious how the multiple disciplines work with one another to address solving a particular problem associated with the broader theme. 56



A program that is both collaborative and multidisciplinary has some distinct pedagogical advantages compared to the alternative at the cost of some significant organizational freedom. In this type of program, a theme is identified in which the disciplines depend on one another to achieve the scientific goal of the project. The collaborative nature of the project makes it more obvious to the participants of the outreach program how multiple disciplines cooperate with one another to solve a common problem. The program also benefits from better continuity compared to many common themed but non-collaborative programs because the independent goals of the multidisciplinary work are more intertwined. A drawback of this type of program is that there is less freedom for the principle investigators to tailor the program in accord with their independent research interests. Compromise from all members of the team is usually necessary for the creation of a successful program. Moreover, since the interdisciplinary activities are inextricable, the success of the program requires equal involvement from all participants, which can be challenging in a collaborative environment.

Table 1. Pros and cons of a common themed versus collaborative interdisciplinary outreach program Program type

Pros

Cons

Common Themed

• Broad topics (eg. energy, health, environment, etc.) can be selected. • Principal investigators can design projects independent of one another • More organizational freedom

• Sometimes lacks con-tinuity between disciplines • Less easy for participants to see how disciplines benefit from one another.

Collaborative

• Better continuity between disciplines • More obvious to participants how one discipline benefits from another.

• Less freedom for individ-ual principal investigators to design projects in line with their research interests • Logistics can be complicated

Overall, we considered that the benefits from a collaborative and multidisciplinary program outweighed its drawbacks. As a result, we decided to pursue a program that would take advantage of our expertise in a cooperative manner. This is not to say that a common themed project would have been unsuccessful or inferior, but we thought a collaborative project would be easier to demonstrate how a project could benefit from multidisciplinary perspectives. Choosing a Topic The most important choice that we had to make during the organization of our outreach project was its topic. A critical factor that we identified as being important was to choose a topic that had significant social significance. This requirement stemmed from research that has shown that educational and career choices made by students is most closely linked to topics that overlap with their personal interests, 57



enthusiasm, and experiences rather than pragmatic factors, such as maximizing earning potential (17–20). This finding parallels our anecdotal experience with high school aged students, who demonstrate an intense desire to make significant contributions to society. Therefore, to better appeal to high school aged students in a way to make STEM careers more appealing, we targeted themes for our program with significant social importance. A second criterion that was used when choosing a topic was our desire to develop an outreach program that closely mimicked a research environment. Studies carried out on undergraduate students have revealed that those who participate in a research experience were much more likely to pursue careers in science and technology that those who did not (21). While to the best of our knowledge, similar studies have not been carried out for high school aged students, we hypothesized that a similar correlation would also exist for students in this age group. We therefore targeted a topic that could incorporate elements of uncertainty that are inherent to research projects so that students will get to experience the benefits of discovery and exploration. With these two guiding principles, coupled with the need to make the program interdisciplinary and inline with our professional expertise, we decided that a program built around biodegradable plastics would be a good topic for our outreach program. Environmental sustainability is an issue that all students are aware of and many have a passion for becoming involved in. In particular, the large amount of plastic waste that has resulted from the emergence of a "disposable" culture provides an attractive problem to target. Not only are students acutely aware of the problem from the large amount of media coverage that it has received (22–24), but most students also appreciate the problem based on their own personal experiences. As a result, the problem is more tangible to students. Interestingly (and unexpectedly), while students are aware of this significant social problem, they are rarely aware of the issues associated with its solution. Recycling programs have been engrained into today’s youth, but the challenges associated with recycling plastic materials is usually not well understood by students. Moreover, since students have always lived with the convenience of a plastic world, many take for granted the special properties that plastics possess and the methods used for their synthesis. These gaps in understanding provided us with tremendous opportunity to develop an educational plan that formed the platform for our outreach program. Biodegradable polymers also provided us with a perfectly suitable topic for a collaborative, multidisciplinary program. Specifically, the biodegradable polymer poly(lactic acid) is derived from lactic acid, which is easily obtained from biological sources through standard biochemical processes. Nevertheless, lactic acid itself is not suitable for polymerization to high molecular weight polymer. It first must be elaborated chemically to a cyclic dimer of lactic acid before it can be polymerized. This necessity provided us the link between biochemistry and organic chemistry that was needed for a multidisciplinary project that was also collaborative.

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Defining the Nuts and Bolts With these three important elements decided upon, the next challenge that we faced was actually designing how the program would precede, the so-called nuts and bolts of the program. Although it is not the intent of this chapter to describe in detail our decisions regarding exactly how the format of the P2P program was established, we think that relaying some of our experiences with defining the nuts and bolts of the program would be helpful to others seeking to establish their own programs. From this perspective, there were four elements that we found to be critical and linked to one another: the size and duration of the program, the space needed for the program, and the mentoring strategy employed to guide the participants. When thinking about implementing the program, a primary consideration was the size of the program. To maximize the program’s impact, we logically wanted to involve as many students as possible. However, in order to best mimic a research environment, we wanted to recreate an intimate setting involving relatively few participants (3-4 students). Such a setting would also allow the students to participate in all activities and requires the students to work with one another to achieve the scientific goal of the project. Moreover, smaller groups (3-4 students per mentor) would also be easier to supervise. Finally, as is the case with most research driven departments, we faced significant space constraints that limited our ability to implement a large program. For these reasons, we decided that a program involving small groups of people would be best. To minimize time constraints for all involved, we thought the timeframe of the program would be best suited for the summer. In order to involve as many participants in the program, we decided to have two sessions of the program per month, each being held twice weekly (either Mon/Wed or Tu/Thurs). The program was also held for two months (July and August), so that ultimately four different sections of the P2P program existed for the students to choose from. With this organization, we were capable of hosting up to sixteen students per summer with the physical space requirements of one standard size lab bench and one six food hood. Since the two sessions were being run concurrently, we chose to have two different part-time undergraduate supervisors (mentors), but the program could easily be implemented with one full time mentor. An unexpected obstacle that we incurred with this organizational setup was the pre-existing time commitments that are common among modern high school students. A month long program, even those that only meet twice a week, can be problematic for students to commit to due to family vacations, involvement in sports or band programs, or the desire to be involved in other summer activities. This factor can be circumvented with the development of shorter programs or programs that occur more frequently throughout the week. Unfortunately, the former option is not amenable for the timeline required for the P2P program (e.g. culturing the bacteria needed for glucose fermentation takes several days), but the latter is something that we will likely explore in the future. The glue that holds the entire program together is the strategy implemented for supervising the high school students. Several factors are important when deciding how to accomplish this goal. From our perspective, we wanted to 59 Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


design a program that had supervisors that were easily relatable and positive role models for the participants (25). We also wanted to mimic a genuine research environment as closely as possible. Inherent to all such environments are mentor-mentee relationships that are distinct from teacher-student relationships. The mentor-mentee relationship is much more collaborative due to the less authoritative position of a mentor as opposed to a teacher. This difference was abundantly evident when high school student participants interacted directly with the professors that oversaw the outreach program. Even when interactions are kept as casual as possible, the fear that students have for being wrong in front of authority figures usually resulted in poor communication or awkward, forced interactions. We considered using graduate students as mentors for the program, but this organization was not preferable because the summer is a very productive research time for graduate students. Moreover, the age difference between high school students and graduate students would lead to a different kind of relationship than what we intended. Therefore, in order to establish a mentor-mentee relationship that is most similar to the relationship between senior and junior graduate students in research labs, we decided to use undergraduate mentors for our program (our program size required two undergraduate students). Undergraduate students are much closer in age to high school students, which naturally make them more relatable to high school aged students. At the same time, undergraduate students share a recent common experience with the high school students (i.e. attending high school), which makes it is easier to establish a mentor-mentee relationship that promotes better communication and a positive sense of accomplishment. Other programs have shown that this “near peer” mentorship has been very effective to achieve similar goals (26–29). Finally, undergraduate students were easy to recruit because many students seek out opportunities such as mentoring in the P2P program due to its social significance and because they can bolster their resumes for their future career aspirations. Despite these advantages, the decision to use undergraduate students as mentors for our outreach program did not come without some trepidation. We were primarily concerned that these students would be too inexperienced to be effective mentors. To address this concern, we created a "P2P boot camp" that was an intense training course led by graduate students from our research labs. We found that rising junior and senior undergraduate students were experienced enough in general laboratory techniques to quickly learn the slightly more sophisticated experimental techniques required to carry out the P2P program. The burden for training the undergraduate students for the graduate students is minimal because students from each lab share the responsibility, focusing on the component of the project that is most closely related with the expertise of their supervisors. The boot camp can be carried out over the course of one week, which we found simultaneously prepared the undergraduate mentors well to be mentors for the P2P program and gave them some experience with what life would be like if they decided to become graduate students in the future.



Figure 4. Flow chart illustrating the hierarchical mentorship and summarizing some responsibilities for the different mentors in the P2P program. As a result of the hierarchical organization of the P2P program, its participants get exposure to a variety of people pursuing scientific endeavors at various stages in their careers (Figure 4). We have found that this snapshot into the lives of aspiring scientists provides the students with a realistic perspective that is difficult to recreate otherwise. To highlight this advantage, we have several events incorporated into the P2P program where all participants (e.g. high school students, undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors) engage in discussions ranging from the motivation that led to considering a career in science to the challenging problem of promoting STEM disciplines to minorities and women. The participants also develop contacts with various participants in the P2P program that they can use later in their development as scientists. Another factor that we found was important when establishing our interdisciplinary program was the necessity to emphasize the interdependence of the multiple disciplines involved. It was important to us that there was roughly equal time spent carrying out activities associated with each discipline so that students did not assign more importance to a particular discipline. While we realize that this scenario does not realistically portray many collaborative efforts, we nonetheless strived to achieve this goal to stress the interdisciplinary nature of the program. Fortunately, we were able to design a program that achieved this goal as shown in Table 1, which outlines the activities and disciplines for each of the eight sessions of the P2P program. While compromise might be needed to achieve this goal, our experience is that it is beneficial to do so because students 61



develop a good sense for the importance of all disciplines to the success of the project. The final factor that we had to consider was how the outreach program was to be funded. Over the years, the P2P program has been funded by a variety of sources including money from startup funds, competitive internal grants, and competitive external grants. It is currently being funded by the NSF and the Research Corporation Cottrell Scholars program. We found that there were several external private funding sources that provided funding for outreach programs (e.g. Dreyfus Special Grant Program, America Honda Foundation, Google RISE, etc.), but we had little success with securing funds from these sources initially. A factor that we found important to achieve more success was to first have an established program with some initial indicators pointing to the success of the program. As a result, early permutations of the program were funded using startup funds and through generous contributions from internal funding mechanisms in place at Boston College. Investigators interested in starting their own programs are encouraged to lobby their institutions for initial support pointing to the potential recruiting advantages that such programs may provide as well as increased likelihood for external funding to support the program in the long term. Initial costs needed to establish the P2P program was approximately $10,000, which was mostly devoted to one-time purchases of equipment. In subsequent years, the cost of the program significantly decreased to approximately $5000 per year with the bulk of those funds being devoted to stipends for the undergraduate mentors. These costs will of course vary depending on the scope of the program, the cost of living, and the mentoring strategies implemented for the program.

Table 2. Summary of experimental modules and their related disciplines in the P2P program Module

Experiment

Disciplinea

1

Paper Pulping and De-inking

G

2

Cellulase Digest

BC

3

Lactic Acid Fermentation

B, BC

4

Lactic Acid Oligomerization

OC, PC

5

Lactide Formation

OC

6

Lactide Polymerization

PC

a The disciplines are general chemistry (G), biology (B), biological chemistry (BC), organic

chemistry (OC), and polymer chemistry (PC).

Recruiting Participants A component of the program that we undervalued was recruiting students to participate in the program. We underestimated the number of activities that many modern high school students undertake in the summer months. We have also found it difficult to engage local high schools, especially those that we were 62 Waterman and Feig; Educational and Outreach Projects from the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Professional Development ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


targeting most (e.g. schools in urban areas). Boston College, like most colleges, has very good databases of contacts at local high schools. We took advantage of these contacts, but found that the vast majority of schools did not respond to our initial email enquiry, even when the email was personalized. A key component that we overlooked was to mention the cost of the program to its participants, which in our case was free. When this fact was included in the subject line of the email, we received much more favorable response from a wider variety of schools (approximately 200% increase in response). As a result, we recommend that the cost of the program to its participants be minimal to none so as to make recruiting easier. While distributing information and flyers to counselors and administrators was an effective way to recruit some students, we found that we could reliably recruit participants in the program by carrying out short presentations at local high schools. As a result, we formed strong ties to a few high schools in the area that we regularly attend to recruit for the P2P program. Because we targeted girls and under represented minorities, we go to all girl’s schools or schools that have many minority students. Every year we also go to at least one school that we had not visited before, and we can say that we have successfully recruited students from all but one of the schools that we have visited. During our short (20-30 minutes) visit to the high school, we make a point to highlight the social significance of the program that we have created as well as the interdisciplinary "research" experience that the students will experience. We also bring hands on demonstrations that serve to educate as well as entertain the students. Importantly, the undergraduate mentors take part in these recruiting trips and are responsible for the execution and explanation of all of the demonstrations that are done during the recruiting trip. By doing this, the beginning of the mentor-mentee relationship between the undergraduates and the high school students is established. Recruiting undergraduate students to serve as mentors was accomplished by distributing flyers across campus and specifically targeting students in advanced chemistry courses by briefly promoting the program during a class period. Our funding situation allowed us to provide a part-time stipend ($2000/student) to two students over the course of the summer. We found that this compensation was enough to support students who were staying on campus to take courses or whose families live locally. We found that recruiting undergraduate students was a relatively easy task because many students seek out opportunities such as these to bolster their resumes for future employment or educational opportunities. Program Execution Of course, the most enjoyable part of any outreach program is its execution. This is where the careful planning and philosophizing gets put into action and where real lessons are learned. As is likely the case with most programs, some things we tried worked well and others did not. In this section, we’d like to relay the things that we thought worked well during the execution of the P2P program and also mention a few unanticipated complications. A goal of the program that was overwhelmingly successful was conveying to the students the usefulness of a multidisciplinary approach to an important 63



problem. This was easily achieved due to the collaborative nature of the program that made it obvious to the students how different parts of the program depended on each other. The students also showed a genuine interest in the project, which we largely attribute to the social importance of replacing slowly degrading and oilderived plastics to bioderived and biodegradable plastics. The multidisciplinary nature of the program also gave the students access to a variety of techniques, which gave them a breadth of experiences to draw from in the future. A somewhat unanticipated benefit of carrying out the program in a bonafide research environment was that it allowed the students to use state of the art equipment, such as NMR instruments. Due to budgetary constraints, high school students rarely get exposed to state of the art equipment in school laboratory courses. Many high schools around the country have limited resources in terms of laboratory equipment. Unfortunately, this fact has taken away the best tool that we have as scientists to recruit students. It has been our experience that students are usually excited to use state of the art equipment, even when using them did not require as much personal involvement as other parts of the program. Students have regularly lauded the novelty associated with using this equipment as a strength of the program. Our strategy to use undergraduate mentors was also a success. The relatability of the undergraduate mentors to the high school students easily compensated for their inexperience. The high school students were more comfortable asking questions of their undergraduate mentors than they were of the graduate students, who served as consultants, and certainly the professors who oversaw the program. The dynamic worked well and it appeared as if we succeeded in establishing the mentor-mentee relationship that we intended. Although these aspects of the program were its strengths, there were some challenges that we had to overcome to make the program more enjoyable for the students. An unanticipated consequence of choosing to pattern our outreach program after a research experience is the large amount of down time that is required for tasks such as bacteria culturing, fermentation, distillation, etc. As a result of these time requirements, there were significant periods of inactivity that was a bit off-putting to some of the participants of the program. In earlier years of the program, we had the undergraduate students carry out short demonstrations or "mini-labs" that were scientific in nature but not necessarily tied into the primary goal of the project. While these activities occupied the participants during the down time, some commented that they seemed random (which they were) and disrupted the continuity of the program (which they did). In response to this feedback, we have slowly been developing smaller projects that are associated with biodegradable polymers or biosynthesis. To do this, we have involved the graduate student consultants, who design new experiments for the undergraduate students to implement. This activity bolsters the P2P program and it provides some concrete involvement and innovation from the graduate students, which they can point to when applying to external funding sources (e.g. NSF) that require such activities. A common request from the participants of the program was more direct involvement with the professors. Because many conferences central to the development of research programs occur in the summer (e.g. Gordon Research 64



Conferences) and because professors often plan overseas travel in the summer to avoid conflicts with teaching, it is often difficult for faculty members to directly participate in summer outreach programs regularly. However, it is our experience that one or two interactions with the students throughout the course of the program is enough involvement from the professors to show the participants of the outreach program that they are actively involved in the program. These interactions can be brief updates obtained as a result of the professor walking through the lab (as they likely do with their graduate students) or more formal lessons/discussions led by the professors (e.g. chirality, biosynthesis, NMR spectroscopy, etc.). Both methods are effective and not terribly time consuming. Short lessons involving hands on demonstrations can often be adapted from course lectures from the professors. These lessons provide additional, relevant activities for students to do during down times and are generally reviewed favorably by the student participants. The above interactions also allow professors to promote careers in science. This is done through lunch meetings with undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors in which topics such as motivation for pursuing careers in science are discussed. Professors also relate their own experiences with their students and colleagues who have pursued various careers in scientific disciplines. While our program has not explicitly done so, area scientists can be invited to participate, which gives the students a different perspective about careers in science. Program Evaluation and Beyond We have primarily used anonymous exit surveys to evaluate the efficacy of the outreach program that we developed (10). Important to designing this survey was that it needed to provide useful and constructive information without being overly lengthy. What was important to us was to create a tool that we could use to evaluate the efficacy of the program but also to identify where the program could be improved. Iteration between program evaluation and redefining the nuts and bolts of the program to fine tune (or completely over hall) aspects of the program was an essential part of the process in order to create a program with long-term success. Not only did constant annual adjustments make the program better, it also prevented the program from stagnating, which is important to do to keep the participants engaged. There was nothing particularly novel about the structure of our exit surveys. They contained both quantifiable questions (e.g. statements that the participants can strongly agree, agree, be uncertain, disagree, or strongly disagree with) and free response questions, which is pretty standard as far as we are aware. We made sure to include questions/statements that mixed "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" as the answer that would paint the program in a favorable light to ensure that students were not just circling answers without reading the questions. An example of a statement that we would like to see "strongly disagree" circled was "I was bored". From these answers, we were able to semi-quantitatively and qualitatively assess the immediate impact of the program. Some of our findings have already been discussed and appear in Figure 2. 65



Long-term success of programs such as the P2P and YEP! programs are of the utmost importance to understand better what encourages students to make career decisions. Unfortunately, the P2P program is still too young to provide any meaningful information about its long-term effectiveness. However, we have reliable contact information from our former participants that we intend to use in the future to gain information about the importance that the P2P program had in shaping their ideas about science and ultimately deciding what careers to pursue. It is our hope that the program that we developed will be at least a small pebble of encouragement for these students to build upon as they enter college and ultimately the workforce.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have relayed our experiences with planning, executing, and evaluating P2P, a multidisciplinary, collaborative outreach program focused on exposing participants to a genuine research environment. Our intent in writing this chapter was not to imply that we are neither the first nor the best to have organized such a program. Instead, we hope that this chapter will provide those considering organizing a similar program with considerations that would be useful in making key decisions for designing their own program(s). The P2P program is now entering its sixth year of existence, and it has been very rewarding to watch it grow and mature. However, we believe that our program has still a long way to go to develop into something that will meet all the goals that we initially set out to achieve. Important to this ultimate goal is obtaining data regarding the long-term effectiveness of the program. As is the case with the chemical and biological research that is ongoing in all of our labs, the effectiveness of programs such as these cannot stagnate and must include new innovations to keep pace with the aspirations of their intended audience.

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