A Starkville High School student and teacher will travel to Tennessee in July for a summer camp at a prestigious science destination.
Junior A’Shauna Howell and biology teacher Michael Adam will travel to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville for the Appalachian Regional Commission/Oak Ridge National Laboratory 2018 Summer STEM Programs. Howell will attend a two-week residential camp for students, where she will participate in science and other opportunities along with students from across the ARC region, covering counties in 13 states. The program will run from July 7 to July 20. During his time at the laboratory, Adam will conduct scientific research with a group of other secondary school science teachers divided into small groups.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been a part of several scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of new elements and the World War II Manhattan Project. \
Howell said she first heard of the opportunity through her Jobs for Mississippi Graduates teacher Debbie Thomas.
“We will actually be doing science experiments based on ones the (University of Tennessee) has actually started, and we’ll actually be going different places, back and forth to Knoxville, to Oak Ridge.”
Howell and other students will have the opportunity to learn under professors and researchers at the laboratory.
“Ms. Thomas, my JMG teacher, actually introduced me to it,” Howell said. “She was telling me about it one day in class. Three people applied for it, and I was the one that got accepted.”
Howell said she had become interested in science in part because of Adam and SHS chemistry teacher Brenda Jackson. She also described what she had gained as part of the JMG program, which aims to help at-risk and disadvantaged Mississippi students transition from school to the workforce, higher education or the military. It is the state arm of the national Jobs for America’s Graduates program.
“In our class, we give 110 percent no matter what,” Howell said. Adam, who serves on the SHS JMG Board, said he had always wanted to visit the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He said he was “honored” to be asked by Howell and Thomas to attend the program.
“When Ms. Thomas asked me, I was like ‘OK, I need to clear this with my wife, but inside I’m screaming yes!,’” Adam said. “I went home and said ‘Honey, I’m going to this. Let’s put it on the calendar … She knew that I’d been wanting to go to Oak Ridge, so when I said Oak Ridge, she was like ‘yep. You’re going.’”
Adam said he was unsure what sort of research he would be doing for the two weeks, but said he had requested to work on biology, since it is what he teaches. He said doing research would help him and other teachers teach students how to properly research.
“We can come back, and when we’re talking to our students about the scientific method and how research is done, if we have more real- world experience, we can bring that into the conversation with them,” Adam said.