ASU Research E-Magazine: Reaching Out Across Arizona

Joaquin Bustoz knows what works. Now he wants to spread the word. The ASU educator is taking the essential ingredients of his successful Math-Science Honors Program for minority students and is applying them to inner-city schools and to schools on the Indian reservations.

The essentials include early enrichment, intense instruction, and dedicated, well-trained teachers. Hundreds of young students and teachers fill programs begun by Bustoz and his staff. Each program is part of ASU’s Institute for Strengthening Underrepresented Minority Students in Math and Science (SUMMS), an umbrella organization created in 1993.

One new project is the Young Scholars Summer Enrichment Program for middle school students on the Navajo reservation. The program is a joint community project with Friendly House in Phoenix. It focuses both on teacher training and after-school tutoring for students. A similar project for both students and teachers is run at St. Peter’s School on the Gila River Indian reservation.

Marigold Linton and Joaquin Bustoz

Marigold Linton directs the SUMMS American Indian programs. She works directly with schools on reservations throughout Arizona to bolster their mathematics and science instruction. These efforts are supported by funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In 1994, Linton and Bustoz began contacting the education directors of all 20 tribes in Arizona to enlist their support in combining resources with ASU.

“We want to recruit more American Indians into the Math-Science program and into the university. We also want to strengthen our retention programs,” Bustoz says. “I don’t understand what the forces are that work against American Indians at the university. As a scientist, that frustrates me.

The NASA grant provides for after-school enrichment and summer school programs on nearby reservations. It also provides funding for 10 additional American Indian high school students in the Math-Science Honors Program. Also funded are four summer associate positions for teachers in reservation schools and tribal colleges. The intent is to expose these young teachers to cutting-edge research and teaching techniques.

“People are becoming convinced that it’s a systemic problem, that we must use a bootstrap approach from the bottom up,” says Linton, a Cahuilla Indian and former director of educational services at ASU’s College of Education. “We want to form alliances and have all the parties talking to one another.”

Teachers on the reservations are isolated and have difficulty taking coursework to keep current, says Barbara Martinez, SUMMS community program developer. The Gila River project has focused on teacher training, along with summer enrichment classes for third through eighth graders. After-school tutoring is provided by ASU students during the school year.

In the Young Scholars Program, ASU professors spend several weeks each summer with a group of Navajo middle-school students, first on the reservation and later at the university. The youngsters learn chemistry, computer science, astronomy, physics, and mathematics. Funding comes from the National Science Foundation and ASU.

During the past year at the Friendly House, 40 inner city grade school teachers received extra training in mathematics and math education in a series of workshops taught by Yolanda De La Cruz, assistant professor at ASU West. Several ASU students also worked with neighborhood students as tutors and teachers in a drop-out prevention program.

In addition, during the past summer, 65 bilingual teenagers participated in a modified version of the Math-Science Honors Program at Friendly House. They were taught by ASU mathematics graduates.

By using SUMMS programs to reach minority students in the earlier grades, and by raising the level of their instruction, Bustoz believes that ASU will have better prepared students in the next few years. Many may go on to teach mathematics and science.

“ASU should be a national leader when it comes to involving minority students, particularly American Indians,” he says. “We have planted the seeds. Now the university is poised to nurture and pick the fruit of that planting.”—Sarah Auffret