Photos: Milliones students and their mentors measure the periods of pendulums

The Carnegie Mellon University-Milliones Physics Concepts Program is an outreach program in which children at the Milliones Technology Academy meet with Carnegie Mellon mentors  to learn fundamental concepts in science. Milliones is an inner-city public middle school, located in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The two main goals are to teach the Milliones students some of the fundamental physics concepts that  underlie much of science and technology, and to provide the children with hands-on experience on how scientific research is carried out. Much of the effort is centered on the Milliones students preparing a project to present at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science (PJAS) science fair early in February.

Professor Leonard Kisslinger is the organizer of the program and Professor Thomas Ferguson is the co-organizer. During the 2001-2 academic year we had about 15 mentors, who are mainly Carnegie Mellon undergraduates, and 15 Milliones students. Ten 7th- and 8th-grade kids completed projects for the PJAS fair and nine of them presented them at the fair on February 2, 2002 (one missed the bus). In addition, four 6th-grade children completed projects which could be a basis for projects to be presented at the 2003 fair, since the PJAS restricts presentations to grades 7-12.

After the science fair is over, a number of Carnegie Mellon physics faculty give lecture/demonstrations, teaching the Milliones students basic physics concepts. During these sessions, the children work with mentors completing worksheets on that day’s physics topic.  In all of these activities, two of the Milliones science teachers, Mr. Scott Bedillion and Mr. Aros Bartello, play essential roles, and the Milliones principal,  Dr. Eunice Anderson, provides important support. We also receive excellent support for the science fair projects from Carnegie Mellon Physics Department members Ms. Stacey  Benson and Dr. Barry Luokkala.

The program is generously funded by the Buhl and Grable Foundations. This allows us to pay the mentors at work/study rates, to provide a bus for transporting the kids from Milliones to Carnegie Mellon, and to buy equipment and supplies for the PJAS projects.

This is the third year of our program. We organizers have learned a great deal during this time. First, we have found that all of the work on the science  projects must be done at Carnegie Mellon so that mentoring plays the  essential role for these children. Next, that our weekly sessions do not give us enough time to teach the background scientific principles, build the apparatus, carry out enough runs to provide sufficient data to draw conclusions, and for the kids to prepare for presentations in the quite formal style used at the PJAS fair. We have found that by holding several Saturday sessions we can  accomplish these goals and also gain a mechanism for the parents/guardians of the children to become involved in the program.

We are now recruiting mentors for the 2002-3 academic year. A third Milliones science teacher wants to participate in the program, allowing us to possibly increase the number of kids to 20 or more. We believe that the program provides a wonderful opportunity for inner-city children to become involved in science and to form a solid relationship with a college-student role model. It also allows the Carnegie Mellon mentors to make a great contribution to society, while providing them a rather unique learning experience.