Microbiologist Advocates Starting
Good Science Education Early

This week on WOL AM, Marian Johnson-Thompson, director of Education and Biomedical Research Development at the National Institutes of Health, spoke to a radio audience of African American children and their families about issues related to under-represented minorities and women in the sciences, health disparities, environmental justice, science education and emerging infectious agents.

"I am very interested in K-12 science education," said Johnson-Thompson during an interview on a radio program called Delta SEE Connection. "We've known for sometime that—in order to ensure that we have well-prepared students to enter higher education in science, education, technology, math, engineering—it is very important for us to start early...to begin to introduce them to the topics, and also to make sure that they are taking the right courses so that they can be prepared at each level as they develop."

To produce Delta SEE Connection, a weekly radio program, AAAS has joined forces with the nation's largest African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and the Delta Research and Educational Foundation (DREF).

"This initiative is opening for us a whole new medium for providing a window into the world of science for the African American community," says Shirley Malcom, director of the AAAS Directorate for Education and Human Resources and a commentator on the show. "In their stories, the scientists explain the importance of science in their lives, but also in the lives of everyday Americans."

WOL, 1450 AM, the Radio One station in Washington, DC, with the largest African American audience in the area, has become the first station to broadcast the interviews compiled for the project known as Delta SEE, for "Science and Everyday Experiences." The program can be heard every Saturday, from 5 to 6 p.m., through 18 October. In the coming weeks, the series will be distributed to Radio One stations nationwide, as well as to other radio stations in African American markets and to radio stations operated on the campuses of historically-black colleges and universities.

Listen to a clip from the most recent radio program, which was broadcast on Saturday, 5 July, from 5 to 6 p.m., or listen to the entire program in MP3 format (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) or RealAudio (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

See also all past Delta SEE radio programs.

7 July 2003