STAYING THE COURSE
in 2013 for $300,000 and another in 2019 in the amount of $265,000.
“Basically, grants have totaled around $1 million in the last 12 years, but since 90 percent of the budget is administrative, we’re saving the OSD millions of dollars [going virtual] moving the program to Zoom,” he said. Not only has the shift to a virtual curriculum saved money, but it also has a greater outreach.
A DECENT PROPOSAL Since its inception, the GLRTN STEM program had mainly been conducted in-person through summer camps until the pandemic posed new challenges—and unexpected benefits. Te switch from traditional, in-person courses to virtual instruction may have lost that personal touch but ended up with significant cost savings and a wider reach.
Chappelle said the biggest challenge with virtual learning is that you can’t build anything like you can in an in-person outdoor setting or a classroom. “But on the flipside, you can reach 800 more people for 90 percent less money” in a virtual setting, he said. As an example, adding a teacher who would have been paid thousands for in-person instruction could now be paid a lot less per hour for a Zoom class. According to Chappelle, “DOD STEM K-12 teachers with salary and TDY [temporary duty station] costs are paid about $2,500 per week [in-person instruction] versus $40 per hour for three hours of Zoom time and $35 [per hour] for three to four hours of Zoom teaching preparation time.” So for a virtual summer camp of two days versus a five day in-person on site summer camp teachers make $380 versus $2,500.
“When COVID diverted the Army and Tribal Nations to Zoom, we partnered with Wayne State University, and now the GLRTN STEM program has K-12 students nationwide virtually attending these educational Zoom sessions,” Chappelle said of the next- generation virtual camp initiative.
“If this program is allowed to continue, we will be producing a great diversity of scientists and engineers for the defense of the nation.”
110 Army AL&T Magazine Fall 2022
To move the program forward, assess its effectiveness and gain additional funding, Chappelle worked alongside Aaron Tadg- erson, Bay Mills Indian Community and DOD Native liaison, and Sandra Yarema, Ph.D., a professor at Wayne State Univer- sity and the regional director of the Army Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) to submit a case study proposal to Harvard University’s Native American Program Office and Education Department. Te proposal was accepted and taken on by Harvard as the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwa), DEVCOM GVSC, Wayne State University and Harvard Univer- sity DOD STEM K-12 Tribal Nations Outreach Project.
A LITTLE HELP FROM HARVARD In the spring of 2020 when the “pandemic disrupted everything,” said Eric Henson, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Henson and his students eagerly accepted the proposal and took on the project to assist with DOD’s outreach assessment mission. Henson, a citi- zen of the Chickasaw Nation and a research fellow affiliate with Te Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Develop- ment since 1998, teaches a course called Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II—a semester-long project that pairs graduate students with seven different tribal entities to participate in outreach and raise awareness about educational and career opportunities outside of their communities.
“We’re driven by the Native community, focus on what prob- lems they have and ask, ‘How can we help?’” said Henson, who teaches virtual classes via Zoom to his graduate and undergradu- ate students, as well as Native K-12 students. “If you don’t expose kids to these things [math, physics and science], you end up with a vanishing number of people becoming scientists. If you could get a dozen people in junior high school interested, and then another half to enroll, and then another half to graduate, that’s a big accomplishment,” he said in an interview with Army AL&T.
Henson’s 10-year-old son adjusted well to remote learning. Henson added that, although the classroom setting has its bene- fits, the virtual experience can be even more engaging for kids than in-person instruction when they can visualize more things at one time or in a shorter amount of time than if they were to physically get on a bus and experience one place at a time. Te virtual option has afforded the opportunity for wider outreach, which is advantageous for the future of the program.
Since Henson and his students’ involvement, much of the program’s outreach has been done online and through social media, which he tepidly suggested is a “work in progress.” Te social media outreach to K-12 students has been initiated but,
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