Duke BOOST (Building Opportunities & Overtures in Science & Technology) is a Duke University School of Medicine-based program designed to excite young people –particularly underrepresented minorities, girls, and youth from economically challenged backgrounds – about science, and to inspire them to pursue careers in medicine and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)-related fields.
Over the years, BOOST has served more than 500 Durham Public School (DPS) students with the help of DPS teachers, Duke graduate and undergraduate students and faculty, and a host of other community organizations. This year alone, BOOST has accepted more than 70 DPS students.
BOOST offers a constellation of STEM programs for 5th – 12th graders with support from the NIH Science Education Partnership Award. The goal is to unite DPS students with students at Duke, N.C. Central University (NCCU) and UNC to work on research-based science projects, participate in science-driven inquiry both in the classroom and laboratory, and give students exposure to the places where ground-breaking science is producing significant advances, e.g. field trips to the NIH, and other research laboratories, science museums, marine laboratories, participation in peer science competitions locally, state-wide and nationally. All BOOST activities are completely free.
BOOST operated in Durham for a dozen years before the government’s sequester forced it to close in 2012. This year, the program has been fully refunded. A BOOST Launch will be held April 14 from 6-8 p.m. at the Museum of Life & Science on Murray Avenue in Durham. More than 300 Durham students, their families, program alumni, coaches, DPS staff and community partners from Duke and NCCU are expected to attend.
“Our most recent success in garnering a significant NIH grant to support the full rollout of BOOST allows us to target children who are from first-generation college, economically disadvantaged and under-represented families, in partnership with the Durham Public School System,” said Brenda Armstrong MD, associate dean of the Duke University School of Medicine (SoM) Admissions Office, where BOOST is administratively based. “Teachers in DPS, graduate and professional students in STEM, and health science-related disciplines from Duke, UNC, and NCCU are part of the concentrated, resource-intensive BOOST efforts, beginning as early as the 3rd and 4th grades and extending to the end of high school.”
Research shows that students tend to lose interest in the sciences between their elementary and middle school years. BOOST seeks to change that by making science fun and accessible.
This summer, students at each grade level will participate in a one-week immersion program focusing on a STEM unit – for 7th graders, their unit will be on “CSI”-style forensic science. Throughout the rest of the year, the students will work on group science projects, participate in STEM-related field trips, and meet once a month for Science Saturdays.
“We really want to start the pipeline now, so they know what career they want to go into, find out the steps they need to take now to get there,” said BOOST Program Director Douglass Coleman.
The original grant to support BOOST came through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute with supplemental funding from Duke, the School of Medicine, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Office of the Chancellor for Health Affairs. BOOST joins the Robert Wood Johnson-funded Summer Medical and Dental Education Program (SMDEP), which targets talented URM, disadvantaged and first generation college freshmen and sophomores in a six-week residential intensive biomedical science curriculum based at Duke’s School of Medicine. SMDEP also is administratively based out of the SOM Office of Admissions.
“Both programs represent a long-range commitment at Duke to increase the numbers of students academically prepared to take on STEM-related coursework and, eventually, careers,” Armstrong said.