THE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE ACROSS CULTURES AT HOPE (REACH) PROGRAM AT HOPE COLLEGE

The Research Experience Across Cultures at Hope (REACH) program is a 6-week term in which area high school students and teachers engage in collaborative scientific research with faculty and students from the college’s Natural and Applied Sciences Division. The goals of the REACH program are (1) to expose local high school students and teachers to the opportunities and excitement of scientific research, (2) to provide scientific experience to high school students in the hope that they will pursue a career in the mathematical and/or natural sciences, (3) to provide underrepresented groups the opportunity to do scientific research in the hope of increasing diversity within the college community and these fields of study, and (4) to improve communication and education relationships between Hope College and the area high school communities. A total of 23 high school students and 2 high school teachers participated in the summer 2010 REACH program. Of these, four students and one teacher were part of REACH II, a team-based research project that performed a survey of the bogs of Allegan County, Michigan. The goal of this project was to develop a stratigraphy and general history for four area bogs and to look for county-wide patterns in their stratigraphies and histories. To that end, the REACH II group collected cores from each of these bogs and made and described smear slides at regular intervals from these cores. Each student then analyzed the smear slide data to develop a geologic history for one of the sampled bogs and to create a stratigraphic cross-section based on those data. Each REACH participant then prepared a poster describing either the project’s methods or individual and comparative bog histories and then presented their poster at the final research celebration. Students learned that research is not solely performed in the laboratory and they especially enjoyed the camaraderie that developed while overcoming the challenges of fieldwork. The hands-on experience of this research also provided the participants with a valuable overview and understanding of the scientific process, from deciding where to collect the cores within the bog, to collecting data from the sediments within those cores, to critically analyzing the data.