Our History
Our Founding
In 1999, Gabrielle H. Lyon and Paul C. Sereno co-founded Project Exploration. Lyon, an activist and educator, and Sereno, a paleontologist and explorer, designed programs that engage small groups of students in meaningful work alongside scientists and caring adults.
These initial programs were intended to launch ongoing, long-term relationships with students and give them the opportunity to experience firsthand the wonder and discovery that scientists access in their professional lives. Since science subjects are culturally and educationally reserved for academically successful students, she worked especially hard to engage students who weren’t academically successful.
In our education system, science is presented as an inaccessible academic discipline and is thus taught in a way that excludes certain students. However, studying science is an intellectual and imaginative experience that offers students a rational, evidence-based way to make sense of the world. Whether students pursue careers in STEM or not, program design and delivery is intended to provide them with critical social and emotional skills and support them in becoming astute problem finders and solvers.
What is access?
This word, defining the ability to approach or enter, intentionally references a struggle for equality and civil rights for all. For Project Exploration, access represents equality in terms of:
- Gender
- Race
- Class
- Economic status
- Opportunity, regardless of academic achievement
Our work is at the crux of an ongoing struggle for equality in STEM.
Why science and scientists?
Science is the last field in our society in which it’s acceptable for students to be illiterate; it’s acceptable for a parent to ask their child, “Why would you do a science program? Are you planning to be a scientist?” This is a normal sentiment, but no parents or teachers would find it acceptable for a student not to learn reading.
Interacting repeatedly in person with scientists could be out-of-reach for our students if it weren’t for the programs offered through Project Exploration. Typically, the only opportunity to be with a scientist is as an audience member at a lecture; this reinforces the intellectual demarcation between scientists and everyone else that’s prevalent in our culture. As this dynamic is enacted over and over again, it reinforces the status quo of these roles. Project Exploration’s focus on fostering and supporting long-term relationships gives students the chance to get to know scientists on a deeper level over time.
Essential Practices and Principles
- Prioritizes Relationships – activities intentionally avoid placing STEM professional at the front of the room as a lecturer and prioritizes students getting to work meaningfully alongside and develop longterm relationships with STEM professionals and PE staff.
- Consciousness Raising – the activity’s intentionally create space for students and the STEM professionals to reflect on the uniqueness of the opportunity being offered and the role students play in the activity. For example, staff raise awareness among students of how unusual it is for any group of students to meet so many STEM professionals of color and elevate them as trailblazers. Often, students aren’t aware of this as a social or political issue—they only think about science in terms of their personal preferences. In doing so, we not only tell the students, “you can be an engineer or doctor or app developer,” we are saying it within a context of the work students are actually doing in that moment.
- Co-Created with Students – curriculum is designed to ensure students have choice in the problems on which to focus, the tools which are applied to problem solving, and/or give students ownership in how their solution will be presented to one another and their community.
- Writing and Reflection – programs intentionally create time and space for students to reflect on the activity individually and as a group. Writing, reading and talking using a structured process is a tool for helping students to make meaning, construct knowledge and develop fluency with literacy and voices.
- Accessible – activities and materials designed in such a way where they are accessible to ALL students, particularly those who may not be academically successful. This includes attention paid to ensure curriculums are culturally competent.
- Public Component – opportunities are continuously created to ensure students can share their work with a public audience. Ideally, this includes convening a diverse public around science and curiosity—especially people who do not regularly come together—to share experiences with our young people. Running programs with a public component is not only useful for validating students’ work, it is good for all of us. This activity enables students to practice communication skills, to have their ideas listened to; but it also affects the public that sees them. Seeing students knowledgeable and excited about science helps audiences realize that non-traditional students are capable of such work.