Nelson Totah, B.S., ION Co-Director, and Instructor

Nelson Totah received a Bachelors of Science degree in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory University in 2004. His research interest focuses upon the neural correlates of consciousness. In August 2005, he will be joining the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh to pursue his Ph.D. with Dr. Antony Grace. Nelson has also worked at the Emory University School of Medicine with Dr. Paul Plotsky studying a rat model of brain development in the context of early life experience and genetic interaction and with Dr. Philip Ninan on a novel hypothesis for human somatosensory and self-dissociative disorders. In 2003, he was awarded a BrainStEm Fellowship to study at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland, U.K.) where he conducted research in the lab of Professor Verity Brown. Nelson is also a licensed Emergency Medical Technician and is a federal employee of the Department of Homeland Security as a member of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Nelson also conducts research on novel teaching methods. In 1997, Nelson began work to create the Science National Honor Society as a non-profit organization with the goal of changing America’s science education system.

How did the SNHS begin?

In 1997, Nelson founded the SNHS while still in high school. Armed with the goal of changing America’s science education system, he decided that he should create a national school organization that would have student chapters at public and private high schools. His goal was to honor and encourage students in science through their school chapters. However, he also hoped to provide much-needed resources directly to students and teachers. Nelson wrote a business plan for the SNHS in the form of a governing Constitution, filed the 501c3 paperwork for IRS non-profit designation, and began pursuing professionals for the Board of Directors through acquaintances in local scientific organizations. He currently writes numerous fund raising letters, creates partnerships with professional organizations, creates programs, recruits schools, and helps run day-to-day operations.

Nelson Totah answers: Why is the SNHS needed?

My impetus for creating the SNHS stemmed from my interest in fixing what I see as fundamental problems in the U.S. educational system and the American public’s value of the scientist. While academia will always be a minority in society, the value placed on the scientist could be considered abnormally low. The public seems to perceive science, not as a process of building truth, but as final facts or sound bytes on the news.

Even though the U.S. National Science Education Standards encourage authentic scientific inquiry (i.e., study of the research that scientists actually carry out), recent studies (we will be happy to provide a list of references) have found that, besides resource limitations on schools due to costs and lack of expertise, students also receive no training from authentic scientific literature. The practice of science by the scientist is founded upon studying scientific communications in academic journals. Importantly, schools lacking this method of study engender a nonscientific view of the world in which science is viewed at merely a superficial level of final facts. In the current educational system, students have little access to the knowledge and tools that define science in its own domain.

Furthermore, learning in the classroom prevents the student from exposure to the scientific community, the cultural identity of the scientist, and the value and use of a scientific skill (such as work on disease processes). My passion (and that of all scientists) for the laboratory lies in its role as the setting in which scientific truths are created and subsequently torn down or modified as new hypotheses are formulated. With every new journal publication, your breath is taken away by a new piece of the puzzle. With every new piece, we journey towards ultimate understanding of the universe, life, and the human mind. However, students in the classroom often learn only final facts, such that a science appears to be a mere itemization of facts that must be memorized. Students must experience the process of argumentation and debate that occurs between competing scientific ideas and builds our knowledge.

Nelson Totah discusses the SNHS and apprenticeship programs

One of the purposes of the SNHS is to bring the act of learning science into an authentic setting so that students do not learn surface facts as dilettantes and view success as a certain score on a test of memorized facts. Instead, students should become motivated by making “real” science and are, thus, become motivated by the same factors that motivate professional scientists. In accordance with this goal, in 2003, I created an SNHS apprenticeship program in neuroscience called the Biomedical Institute in Neuroscience (BIN). Please read about BIN at www.scienceNHS.org/BIN03. BIN is an 8 week summer program in which high school students learn to think critically, utilize technical and theoretical approaches to scientific questions, and employ diverse models for experimentation. The 2003 program was co-administered and funded by the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (Atlanta, GA) and was held, mainly, at Emory University. The program had 5 students (75% female and 75% minority) and included faculty from Emory University, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, and Morehouse School of Medicine. I am currently co-writing a venture grant for 2004 and hope to offer a position to up to 20 students. Furthermore, SNHS is working to create an Institute in Houston and another in Chicago focusing on cancer oncology. These programs are important for the universities involved because we try to have, not just faculty, but undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students teaching in the program.

Importantly, I hope to change education policy by publishing academic case studies of the programs in order to illustrate the benefit of apprenticeship programs, like BIN. A 2001 study has found that apprenticeship programs in science are valued because the learners become immersed into a community “at the elbows” of the experts. The learner “is initially positioned within a community of practice as a legitimate peripheral participant” and, during study, begins to play a larger role in the community. It was found that, in apprenticeship programs, as the students left the edges of the scientific community and moved “toward the center, their ideas about what it means to do science grew more complex, more realistic, and richer.” Furthermore, the motivating factors behind student success change from achieving a given grade or memorizing facts to becoming an active member in the scientific community. SNHS apprenticeship programs expose students to the culture of the scientist and the value of a scientific skill to humankind.

The SNHS and education policy

Besides apprenticeship programs, I hope that SNHS will provide resources to teachers in the form of educational materials, lab materials, and teacher workshops. I also hope that we can influence education policy by providing information to the public and politicians. An important guide for the SNHS is the teacher. I am often told by teachers across the nation that the government is ignoring science, at least, until 2007, when President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB) will provide funding and requirements for science. However, in the mean time, attendance at teachers’ conferences is rapidly descending and millions of dollars for science have been cut from state budgets. Moreover, NCLB has caused a push towards standardized tests, which is not the best way to learn science unless it is coupled with learning authentic science. NCLB does have numerous positive points, including a large increase in funding by 2007, encouragement of science partnerships and authentic science, and the requirement that teachers be “highly qualified” with a bachelor’s degree and demonstrated competencies. However, since NCLB only provides funding for math and reading until 2007, I question if we can wait until 2007. If we are not careful, it will be science education and our future scientists who will now be “left behind.”

Board