STEM

Chaminade’s I Am a Scientist program is all about hands-on learning

For the first time since its founding in 2009, Chaminade’s popular I Am a Scientist summer camp traveled thousands of miles away to American Samoa this year, setting up base at the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center in Fagaalu on the eastern shore of Pago Pago Harbor.

Rhea Jose, an outreach coordinator for Chaminade’s CIFAL Center, said the two-week health sciences boot camp was geared toward first to eighth graders. In all, 169 students from elementary to high school attended the camp, getting a taste for what scientists do every day. “We brought six large luggage, which were packed with all kinds of equipment, including microscopes, DNA extraction kits, pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs, pipettes, thermometers, black lights, even glitter,” Jose said.

Since its inception, the I Am A Scientist outreach program has reached 72,339 students and visited 450 schools across Hawaii, Guam, Saipan and now American Samoa, according to Lori Shimoda, I Am A Scientist founder and research associate in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics department.

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Shimoda said before the program was launched, she had several discussions with CIFAL Honolulu Research Director Dr. Helen Turner about the need for a program that allowed keiki to experience what it means to be a scientist first-hand. “We were at a loss for how to do it,” Shimoda added, until her son—in third grade at the time—came home from school complaining that his science lessons were boring.

The reason? “They did not get to use the cool scientific equipment in the laboratory.”

The comment became the blueprint for the IAS program.

With the help of other faculty members and Silversword students, Shimoda started to take actual scientific equipment and supplies into classrooms to teach keiki about science by letting them become real scientists, using real scientific experiments and techniques.

“IAS takes real scientists and science undergraduates into the classroom so keiki can meet and talk to them about what it’s like to be a scientist, and how to go to school to become one,” Shimoda said.

“We offer a unique and fun science experience using equipment not typically found in schools. The science lessons are robust, and taught by working scientists.”

Funded by the Frederic Duclos Barstow Foundation for American Samoans, the IAS-AS camp was a unique collaboration between Chaminade and the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center, which ranks among the best medical facilities in the Pacific and is the only hospital in American Samoa.

Other partners included the American Samoa Telecommunication Authority, American Samoa Department of Youth and Women’s Affairs, the American Samoan Department of Education School Lunch Program, The National Science Foundation’s Alliance Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (ALL-SPICE) and CIFAL Honolulu. The camp focused on health science, a key need area.

“We remove barriers to participation by going to the school and being free,” wrote IAS-AS program staff member and Associate Professor of Biology Jolene Noelani Cogbill, in a write-up on the camp.

“We received daily comments from parents and community members, expressing their gratitude for bringing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to elementary-aged students to American Samoa, and asking if the IAS-AS program would be coming back regularly.”

They also noted how there are few educational STEM opportunities for students in American Samoa, and those that do exist are targeted towards high school students, Cogbill said in her report.