ANN ARBOR—It is 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and the kids at the Arrowwood Hills Community Center in northeast Ann Arbor are letting off steam after a long day at school.

But when University of Michigan undergraduate Amy Marcotte and her team of six Reach Out! volunteers appear, carrying their cartons of supplies, there are hugs all around and the pandemonium quickly turns into purposeful activity as the Arrowwood Science Club settles down for another weekly meeting.

This week’s topic is levers, and each team huddles with its mentor to figure out how to demonstrate the concept. Soon each team becomes a human machine, demonstrating hammers, catapults, and other levers for the rest of the group. Next, everyone gets to build machines—from a balance to a rowboat to a pair of scissors—out of plastic blocks, with help from their mentor.

Marcotte is just one of seven coordinators who work with about 80 volunteer mentors, all of whom give up a significant amount of time from their studies in engineering, pre-med, or a range of other majors to pass their love of science on to kids.

“I originally volunteered as a member of the Pre-Med Cub, dabbled about a bit, and ended up getting hooked on working with kids,” she says. While most Reach Out! volunteers are undergraduates, the group includes some grad students and even some U-M scientists who take specific projects to the various science clubs.

Even though she still plans to go to med school, Marcotte has applied for a two-year stint with Teach for America after graduation. According to Martha Toth, Reach Out! program associate, developing this kind of commitment to working with kids is not uncommon.

“Often, with the best of intentions, students—especially girls—who are good at math and science are ‘pipelined’ into engineering or one of the sciences when they’re still too young to know exactly what they want to do with their lives,” Toth says.

“Reach Out! gives undergraduates a chance to break out of their academic routine and do something completely different. Most find the experience exhilarating and rejuvenating.”

Debbie Hamann, a 2000 graduate of the College of Engineering who postponed her engineering career to serve as Reach Out’s elementary programs coordinator, agrees with this assessment, but offers another perspective. “It’s not only technical people who rethink their career goals. Students from all disciplines can experience startling revelations,” she says. “One education major changed fields after our summer camp last year, when she realized that she couldn’t cope with being with kids all day!

“The basic goal for younger students is to develop relationships, increase their self esteem, and promote the idea that science is fun and science is everywhere,” Hamann says. For high school students, the focus shifts to academic tutoring and/or career mentoring.

The elementary school science clubs and high school mentoring programs are part of an extensive K-12 outreach program organized by the U-M’s Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), an interdisciplinary center funded by the National Science Foundation to exploit the unique opportunities afforded by ultrashort optical pulses in many fields of inquiry.

Jeannine La Sovage, program director, sees it as the springboard for creating a “learning community” that will exist beyond the walls of CUOS. “Learning communities are all about bringing people from throughout a community together to focus on the needs of their youth,” La Sovage says. In addition to U-M students and faculty, volunteer mentors and funding have come from the Downtown Ann Arbor Kiwanis club, several area school districts, the Neutral Zone (a teen activity center), and both Community Church of God and Bethel AME Church, which serve large African-American congregations.

For more information about the U-M program, see www.eecs.umich.edu/mathscience/scienceclubs/clubs.html

EDITORS: The regular program ended when U-M classes ended on April 17. However, volunteers will keep the activities going until the end of the public school year. For information, contact Debbie Hamann (see list of contacts below).

Photos: These science clubs are very photogenic activities. For more information about available photos, contact Debbie Hamann.

Story ideas: •Local kids volunteering: see list of volunteers and hometowns below (Debbie Hamann) •Community pulling together to help kids learn (Jeannine La Sovage, Martha Toth) •Students find that giving has many benefits, including character development, leadership skills, a sense of community, and a wider world view (any of the contacts below)

Contacts: •Debbie Hamann, elementary programs coordinator, (734) 647-0764, [email protected] •Jeannine LaSovage, program director, (734) 763-4918, [email protected] •Martha Toth, program associate, (734-763-5578, [email protected]

Some Reach Out! volunteers and their hometowns: •Angeline Ti—Ann Arbor, MI •Rema Mounayer—Bloomfield Hills, MI •Bridget Briley—Rochester Hills, MI •Debra Hamann—Saline, MI •Amy Marcotte—South Lyon, MI •Steven Colarossi—St. Clair, MI •Roselle Herrera—Troy, MI •Lindsay Lipsitz—Stamford, CT •Melissa Bilchik—Potomac, MD •Marci Cane—Huntingdon Valley, PA

Reach Out!engineeringPre-Med CubMartha TothK-12 outreach programJeannine La Sovagewww.eecs.umich.edu/mathscience/scienceclubs/clubs.html