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Green House Venture Featured on PBS Show 'Sci-Tech Now'

The community partnership between Saint Louis University and a new non-profit called the Green House Venture is receiving nationwide attention for bioscience

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The partnership between SLU and the Green House Venture with four area schools promotes early childhood education in STEM subjects and urban agriculture.

An outgrowth of efforts at SLU to promote early childhood education in STEM subjects and urban agriculture, the Venture has formal relationships with the University and four economically and racially diverse elementary schools that comprise the Urban Education Alliance: St. Margaret of Scotland School (Parochial), St. Louis Language Immersion School (Charter), Mullanphy Investigative Learning Center (Public Magnet) and Tower Grove Christian Academy (Christian). The initiative was recently featured on the nationally syndicated PBS program “SciTech Now,” which is produced at KETC-TV Channel 9, in St. Louis.

The video can be viewed through a link on the Venture’s website at http://www.greenhousestl.org/.

The broadcast focused on the Ambassadors Program, launched in fall 2016 with a class of 5 students from each Alliance school. The aim is to offer children the experience of being “student scientists” – starting with an interesting problem, devising hypotheses, conducting experiments, and drawing conclusions. Drawing on their hands-on experiences, the 20 Ambassadors then share what they learn with classmates at their schools through blogs, class presentations, artwork and skits.

“The Ambassadors Program is an important first step toward engaging students from grades 4-8 in a dramatically new approach to bioscience education, one in which students teach students,” said Donald Stump, director of the Micah Program in Urban Poverty Studies at SLU and vice president of the Green House Venture.