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March 7, 2005 Vol. 76, no.
8S
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| FUTURE
ENGINEERS? Local middle-school students participate
in one of the College's Pre-Engineering Partnerships (PEP)
programs, which does math and science outreach. PEP aims to increase
the number of qualified applicants to the College.
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Grant seeks
to increase qualified applicants to Berkeley Engineering, boost diversity
Currently, six percent of
undergraduate engineers are from underrepresented minorities, a percentage
that is not representative of California or the general U.S. population.
Through the Pre-Engineering Partnerships (PEP) program, the College
is reaching out to K-12 schools to try and get underrpresented students
prepared for an engineering degree.
The goal is to increase the number of qualified applicants from schools
which have high concentrations of minority populations, but a low number
of eligible applicants. The culprit is often a lack of middle school
and high school math and science courses, resources and preparatory
programs that are crucial to making students competitive applicants.
Freshmen spots are so competitive that over 700 students who applied
last year had 800s on the math section of the SAT, but half of those
didn't get into the College.
"High school students who apply to Berkeley are uber-qualified," says
PEP's director, George Gagnon. "It's nobody's fault, that's just the
way it is. We're just trying to improve the odds within Proposition
209, which prohibits affirmative action."
So it's nothing but good news when on Feb. 22, the Emeryville Unified
School District, in association with PEP, received an $886,857 state
grant to improve its middle through high school math and science programs.
Much of the grant will fund improved teacher coaching in math, say officials.
PEP has been working with Emeryville schools for over a year and already
has seen its efforts pay off. Statewide, three out of four students
fail their state exit exam in math, says Gagnon. After working with
Emeryville students for a summer, three out of four passed the exam.
Dan Fleming, an Emeryville high school math teacher, was involved in
the summer prep work. "I think it's fabulous the grant will help at-risk
kids improve their academic standing," he says. "The PEP program has
really been a godsend for high performers at Emeryville."
Gagnon also runs an after-school program for seventh to ninth graders
in Emeryville that teaches math and science principles. The current
focus is called "Ancient Engineers." Students are tasked with figuring
out how to bury an Egyptian mummy in a sarcophagus 100 feet below the
earth's surface. Right now, they're working on creating the granite
slabs for the sarcophagus, using some of the same tools available to
ancient engineers --fire, water, earth and wood.
"At first they didn't believe the granite could be cracked using just
fire and water," says Gagnon. "But we challenged them and now they're
using blowtorches and water and they've gotten the slab to crack throughout.
They're learning what all engineers learn: Think through a problem to
design, build, test, and analyze an effective solution."For more information
on PEP, go to http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/cues/pep/index.html.
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