Piloting a genetics and genealogy summer program for at-risk minority youths 12 through 15 to promote interest in STEM fields and to improve health

This project will develop and pilot-test a genetics and genealogy summer camp program for middle-school-age youths that is aimed at building a diverse and broad-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and a Culture of Health in the United States. In this project, participants will study themselves and explore, as scientists, the many facets of the question, 'Who am I?' The curriculum will include genealogical discovery, a personalized genetic ancestry test, and information on recent human evolution and adaptations. The hope is that this project will nurture interest in STEM fields among African-American and Latino middle-school-age youths. The major deliverables of this project will be: (1) developing a summer camp curriculum for summer 2015; (2) conducting two-week summer camps in summers 2016 and 2017; (3) assessing campers' attitudes and learning outcomes (including motivation to undertake further STEM education) using a variety of research methods, including video-recording the learning activities, interviews, and, in some cases, written closed-response or open-response assessments; and (4) translating the summer camp teaching materials into free online materials.