IMPORTANCE OF PROVIDING STEM OUTREACH TO TRADITIONALLY UNDERSERVED INDIGENOUS STUDENTS

Situated on indigenous Cherokee land, higher education institutions in western North Carolina have the opportunity and duty serve descendants of the original stewards of this land. The Qualla Boundary, a subset of the original Cherokee homelands, is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). EBCI minors have lower rates of enrollment in post-secondary education than the general public, and even fewer pursue STEM careers. We began an education outreach project in 2021, with the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, to utilize the advantages of both Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science for earth science students at an EBCI High School. Students took part in inquiry lessons about air and water quality, went on a fieldtrip to the three air quality monitoring sites, and conducted storytelling interviews of their elders. Here, we evaluated the science content knowledge learning outcomes of the project by comparing student responses on pre-and post-instruction surveys. Four classes of students completed a 15-question survey (8 Likert-type, 7 open-ended) about air and water quality.

On the Likert questions, students showed a minor knowledge increase. For example, when asked “How much can smoking inside pollute the air you breathe?”, on the pre survey 74% of students responded with “a lot”, 18% with “a little”, and 8% with “none”. On the post survey 83% responded with “a lot”, 17% with “a little”, and 0% with “none”. The lack of a major increase in understanding using the Likert responses indicated that (1) students knew most of the foundational information prior to the lessons or (2) the questions were not valid and led to students knowing which response to select. The open-ended responses revealed student conceptual knowledge increased. Student responses were more complete, confident, and specific on the post-instruction survey. For example, in response to “What bad health effects can poor air quality and pollution have on people in your community?” on the pre-instruction survey, students wrote “health problems”. On the post-survey, students responded with “asthma”, “lung cancer”, and “heart disease”. This demonstrates that outreach efforts from higher education institutions can have an impact on student learning in high schools of traditionally underserved populations.