American Indian students get science education boost at UNMC

Second from left to right: Agnes Warner, a student at St. Augustine Indian Mission School on the Winnebago Indian Reservation, Darien QuickBear, and Charlene McCloskey, both students at St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, listen to the lung sounds of a sick patient on a simulated mannequin. Dani Eveloff, far left, recruitment coordinator for UNMC College of Nursing, turns up the volume.

Glen Ginsburg, M.D., teaches Patience Teboe, a student at Bloomfield Elementary, Bloomfield, Neb., how to wrap a cast. Teboe is a member of the Northern Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.

Forty-eight American Indian youths from reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Omaha, participated in the Science Education Partnership Award camp hosted by UNMC earlier this month.

The camp is part of a $1.3 million grant principal investigator Maurice Godfrey, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics for UNMC and the Munroe-Meyer Institute, and Roxanna Jokela, director of alumni relations, received in 2006 from the National Center for Research Resources a division of the National Institutes of Health.

The purpose of the grant is to strengthen the math and science curriculum of American Indian youths living on reservations and in urban areas in Nebraska and South Dakota.

The youths also:

• Visited the Museum of Natural History at University of Nebraska-Lincoln;
  
• Built rockets at the SAC Museum;
  
• Learned about astronomy and aviation at University of Nebraska at Omaha;
  
• Learned how to wrap a cast at UNMC; and
  
• Learned about meteorites and viewed the stars at Mahoney State Park