From July 6th through July 9th, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty in the department of statistics helped run a summer camp for high schoolers in collaboration with the University of Washington’s GEAR UP (gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs) program.
GEAR UP is a program funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education that provides support to students from low-income families with the intention of helping these students access and succeed in college. Since 2018, the University of Washington has been working with the Auburn, Kent, Renton, and Tukwila school districts.
The camp was part of the Husky Leadership Academy. Statistics PhD students Sarah Teichman and Alan Min worked closely with GEAR UP STEM coordinator, Kristen Yip to put together a curriculum. The theme of the camp was “Stats for Storytelling”, and it was attended by 47 students. The students attended six lessons, planned by Alan and Sarah and taught by undergraduate and graduate students in the department of statistics. The lessons were designed to prepare students to work on a group project in which they designed a survey, collected data, and analyzed the results. The camp ended with a chance for students to showcase their projects to their parents. Apart from the lessons and the projects, the students had a chance to hear from faculty members Abel Rodriguez and Jon Wakefield, as well as attend numerous workshops on leadership skills and college access topics that were put together by the GEAR UP staff.
Reflecting on the planning process, Sarah Teichman says, “It was really challenging to figure out what we wanted students to learn about statistics in such a limited time, so we wanted to focus on getting them excited about data. Our goal for the curriculum wasn’t to give students a leg up in later statistics classes, but instead to convince them that statistics is a good tool for asking and answering interesting questions.” Reflecting on the camp, organizer Alan Min says, “It was really cool watching students get excited about different data sets that we found, and then they got to figure out what data they were interested in and go out and survey other students on their own".
The department would like to thank Alan, Sarah, and the GEAR UP staff for putting together the camp, and looks forward to continued involvement with GEAR UP programming in future years.
UW Statistics participates in GEAR UP
