For a group of Hope High School girls, a recent heart anatomy lab at Roger Williams University began like any ordinary science class — a teacher at the front of the room talking.

But, when the student assistant stuck his gloved hand into the bucket of sheep hearts and placed an organ on trays in front of each set of lab partners, the science got real.

Any yawning ceased and drifting attention came into sharp focus. Within moments, as the students followed instructions on their lab sheets, nervous glances gave way to bold experimentation.

Scalpels in hand, they scraped away fat and started identifying the ventral, dorsal, posterior and anterior sides of the heart. They found the pulmonary artery, aorta and superior vena cava.

Under the instruction of RWU adjunct professor Erin Davis, each pair of lab partners poured water into the heart and squeezed hard to see the water launch out of the pulmonary trunk.

“Not onto your lab partner!” Davis warned, laughing.

The girls then moved onto dissecting the rest of the heart, making cuts so they could see such features as the pulmonary semilunar valve. They ran the scalpel through the pulmonary trunk, into the right ventricle, and then down, around, and up through the tricuspid valve to cut across the right atrium.

Two hours earlier, the girls weren’t sure if the heart was located on the left or right side of the body. Now, bare and stripped clean, the life-giving organ lay in full view, the parts and pathways identified and understood.

New ways to learn

For this group, the Hands-on Science Experience provided by Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) was the first time for such a close encounter with science.

“How many of you have dissected something before?” asked Melissa Guariglia, the RI Educational Talent Search counselor who arranged the trip with Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR outreach coordinator Tim Pelletier.

No hands rose up.

“This is a first time experience,” Guariglia said. “That alone is priceless. They may get a couple of labs in school, but they don’t get what science can be.”

Motioning to Davis, who walked around from one set of lab partners to the next, engaging with each pair of girls as they explored the sheep heart, Guariglia added, “What she is doing for these kids — teaching, engaging — she takes these kids and introduces them to a whole new way of learning.”

Rhode Island ETS provides free help to more than 1,000 students at 10 schools in grades 6-12, who want to complete high school and enroll in a post-secondary institution.

The Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR-ETS collaboration is a natural bond. A critical part of the national EPSCoR mission is to expose K-12 students to the wonders and opportunities of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, build a more educated workforce, and enhance job creation.

Faculty and students at Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR partner institutions find they, too, gain from the Hands-on Science Experiences.

“I love the enthusiasm of the high school students,” Davis said. “They come up with amazing, insightful questions. They’re passionate about the science; it makes me want to volunteer.”

Matt Houck, who graduated from RWU last year with a double major in chemistry and biology, and a minor in psychology, returned to help out with the Hope students: “This is my third time doing it. The kids are excited to learn, they always love this stuff.”

The college experience

Along with the inside look at sheep hearts, the Hope students also got a taste of college life with lunch at the RWU cafeteria and a presentation by Don Mays, associate director of admissions and coordinator of multicultural recruitment.

Mays gives the group what he called his 70/30 talk — 70 percent what the students need to be doing and 30 percent about the university.

“I want them to know that grades matter, extra-curriculars, any leadership involvement that they’ve had,” he said. “They need to be looking at different schools, large, small, urban, suburban.”

Mays also encourages the students not to let college costs pose a barrier because scholarships are available, and colleges and universities are looking to become more diverse. Too often, said Mays, students from underrepresented groups don’t understand the breadth of opportunities that await them because they come from schools with lower graduation rates and fewer graduates who enter four-year programs.

“The perceived disadvantage is bigger than the actual disadvantage,” he said. “That they can go to a private school is the biggest thing they have to wrap themselves around.”

Even though Rhode Island is a small state, many of the students who arrive with the EPSCoR Hands-on Science visit have never set foot on a college campus. Getting the students into science labs and providing new learning opportunities shows them firsthand that they can do and achieve.

Mays said the recognition is immediately palpable: “Not only do we see the light bulb go on, but they express it verbally. It is more than the light bulb.  They either didn’t know this existed or that this was a reality; that there are others here, like them, who are thriving and they can, too.”

Story and photos by Amy Dunkle