Stevens Forest Elementary School (SFES) has a volunteer operated Research Center in which students conduct research as a way to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM processes). The student research is documented in this part of the SFES Website. The students are currently studying the impact of cigarette smoke on plants. It is a multi-year study; initially focusing on the technology needed to conduct the experiments and then the engineering required to put that technology in a practical form. In parallel with the technology and engineering, the students have started some preliminary experiments with the plants.
    To see the student's work, first select an activity (from the Activities menu) and then, for the selected activity, select an objective (from the Objectives menu). Research for 91 objectives has been conducted by the students but only four (indicated by red menu items) have been documented in draft form and uploaded to this Website. These Objectives menu items will eventually be changed to black typeface after the students' research has been reviewed by scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians and health experts who have volunteered to critique their work.

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Mr. George
Pittman

    I'm George Pittman, volunteer director of the Stevens Forest Elementary School Research Center. The goal of the Center is to help students understand the realities of science exploration by conducting research in which the "answers" are unknown to both the students and adult facilitators. Thus, the research takes its own path and not a predetermined route to the "school solution." In this way, the science realities surface on their own.
    The nature of the science content, inseparable from the processes, doesn't matter. The need for using control samples in a physics experiment, for example, is no different from a chemistry experiment, or a study of the impact of cigarette smoke on plants. Eight years of experience with over two hundred groups of students has shown this to be correct; science processes repeatedly surfaced no mater what science content was the focus of the student's research.
    I hope that this Website will allow you to share the Stevens Forest students' work with your students. I am also hopeful that your students will learn about the realities of conducting scientific investigations from the experiences of our students.

Dr. Thomas
Cargiulo

    I am Tom Cargiulo, Director Substance Abuse Services, Howard County Health Department. Substance abuse education has focused on informing students about the negative effects of drugs. An unfortunate side effect has been an over-exaggeration of the negative effects. Once students learn that some of the information is inaccurate, the message is lost. A hands-on, hard science approach being undertaken will, hopefully, enable students to understand that there is a tremendous amount of science that goes into substance abuse education. The Research Center does this and so much more.
    I am hopeful that the students will learn about the health effects of smoking through the casual discussions that occur as a natural part of conducting the research. I am also hopeful that, after real data has been derived from the Impact of Cigarette Smoke on Plants study, the students will learn how to interpret the data and in the future, be able to make informed decisions when they are presented with human smoking data.

    My name is JoD Straub. I am the Youth Services Coordinator for the Howard County Police Department. My work involves providing assistance to youth and families to make positive choices. I first became interested in the Stevens Forest Research Center through an Alcohol and Drug Advisory Committee. The link, of course, is that tobacco is a drug and I am very interested in how that can affect all living things. We're all aware of the media hype on the subject - the enticing marketing of the tobacco products to convince people to use tobacco products as well as the scary medical problems that can results from that use.
    I have also noticed the connection between smoking and anti-social behavior in our youth. Perhaps curtailing one could have a beneficial effect on the other. I became interested in finding out what the real deal is. I joined the Stevens Forest Advisory Group to learn, to contribute to the students' health education and to potentially bring new thinking back to my department to help our youth make good choices. Welcome to this site, I hope you find it as interesting and as informative as my association with this study has been.

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    We have designed this site for upper elementary school teachers and children in Howard County, Maryland. Our purpose is to help our young people learn vicariously about cigarettes and science by following the students' research conducted at Stevens Forest Elementary School. We would like to point out that, while this research has been conducted by the students, the development of this Web site describing their research has been undertaken by the adult facilitators. We also recognize that this Web-based method of delivery provides the material to many other people of varying ages and locations. We have documented our students' ideas about cigarettes and science and provided straight forward answers to their questions, which we have found to be far more mature in thinking than we had originally anticipated. As such, we suggest that adults work with young people when they use this material to enhance its educational value, to answer other questions that this work may evoke and to provide guidance if they want try some of the activities that were done by our students under adult supervision.
    Developing this Website has been a challenge. While we have tired to make it function equally well in many browsers, when that wasn't possible, we have made sure that all of the functions work as we intended them to work with the Firefox; the browser that the teachers in Howard County are encourage to use. We suggest that you use Firefox also.

George Pittman
Volunteer Director,
Stevens Forest Elementary School Research Center

sfes.rc@verizon.net