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High School Student with a Traditionally Underrepresented Background

HS Poster

Poster 81 - Getting Back in the Lab: Using Sports as an arena to engage youth athletes in STEM learning through near-peer mentoring.

Saturday, October 26, 2024
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST
Location: Exhibit Hall E, F & G

Introduction: Lack of diversity in the BME (Biomedical Engineering) career fields negatively impacts the development of equitable healthcare technology and reduces the socio-economic mobility of those excluded from the field. Although BME has well documented diversity with respect to female participation, there remains significant underrepresentation with respect to African American and Hispanic population [1]. Using an informal STEM learning environment is essential because it engages students to learn STEM in a fun and engaging way outside the classroom. Using STEM to understand the sport they love; therefore, the purpose of our project is to expand diversity in the STEM field through a 1-week sport-science learning experience for our younger classmates at Central High School

Materials and

Methods: We have worked with Dr. John Drazan from Fairfield University for the past year to learn about how to use engineering to improve our own athletic performance [2]. Thanks to coach William King, we recruited 16 freshman and sophomore student-athletes from different minority groups from Bridgeport, Connecticut. For one week, we separated them into four groups, each was mentored by one of us. We then used their favorite sports and players to change their perspective of STEM and expose them to how it can help them improve in their sports by guiding them through their own research, showing them that you can use STEM in different ways to make it interesting for them. led the whole program introducing them to biomedical engineering tools such as 3D-Ultrasound, instrumented insoles, and EMGs. By taking each group's favorite athlete, we wanted to find out what made that athlete so special through scientific research. So, we guided the 16 freshman and sophomores to their own research of their favorite player and they came up with a lot of good ideas. Students spent the week performing this research and summarized their findings in a poster session alongside Fairfield University undergraduates (Figure 1).
To help improve the program in the future, the students took a survey about how they feel about STEM and what sports they are interested in. At the end these students took the same survey, allowing you to see the growth in their interest and knowledge of STEM in this new engaging way.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: At the end of the camp, we got feedback from all the student athletes. They engaged in conversation about how they can use this way of STEM in their sports but also in school to improve their grades. We had a chance to view the anonymized survey results provided by our own mentors, Dr. Drazan and William King and we saw that our student mentees had increased interest and enjoyment of STEM, and that they believed that STEM could improve their performance as athletes. Therefore, we believe that when giving students of color the opportunity to engage and learn in a way that's appealing which is sports science, these kids will not only do better in their high school STEM classes but will also have a better understanding and drive to pursue a career in the STEM field. As high school students of color, providing these experiences for our fellow student athletes is deeply important to us. We believe that the program we have helped start can inspire our fellow athletes to pursue a STEM career. This can better the engineering field overall and break the present diversity barrier. We hope to present our project at BMES to share our exciting new outreach program with biomedical engineers across the country.

Acknowledgements (Optional): Funding for this project was provided by the Fairfield School of Engineering and Computing and the Sapre Aude Fund. We would like to thank Dr. John Drazan, Mr. William King, Dr. Amy Loya, and Dr. Emily Hangen for their guidance and support in this project.

References (Optional): R. A. Linsenmeier and A. Saterbak, “Fifty Years of Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Education,” Ann Biomed Eng, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1590–1615, Jun. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10439-020-02494-0.
[2]​J. F. Drazan, “Biomechanists can revolutionize the STEM pipeline by engaging youth athletes in sports-science based STEM outreach,” Journal of Biomechanics, vol. 99, p. 109511, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2019.109511