Pre-College Initiative Director of the Year
Margaret C. Tarver
Advisor, Tri-Cities High School NSBE Jr. Chapter, East Point, Ga.
The National Science Foundation decided in 2001 to provide money to the Georgia Institute of Technology to “partner” with predominantly black high schools in the surrounding counties, a relationship that was supposed to provide enhanced science experiences for the pre-college kids. The catch was that no one really knew what a successful partnership looked like.
Enter Margaret C. Tarver, who grew up in segregated, rural Alabama and now teaches chemistry at Tri-Cities High School, a performing arts magnet school in East Point, Ga. Tarver recognized the value of expanded science opportunities for those in a school where the sciences took a back seat to liberal arts. She also knew that for the program to work, she would have to mentor both the graduate students from Georgia Tech and the Tri-Cities students in her new NSBE program.
Frustrated by the limitations of working in Tri-Cities’ labs, one Georgia Tech student proposed taking the students to the lab at Georgia Tech and letting them work on advanced projects at the engineering school.
“…It worked,” says Tarver, “and it was a great experience for our kids.”
For the past nine years, Tarver has overseen a two-way educational corridor between the kids at Tri-Cities High and the graduate chemistry, biology and engineering students at Georgia Tech. She became a “mentor and mother-figure” to a procession of Georgia Tech graduate students.
The program has made science a powerhouse at the arts magnet school. The students in the NSBE program there compete regularly now, and successfully, in the regional Try-Math-A-Lon competition, previously dominated by the area’s private schools. They also have conducted workshops at the NSBE Fall Regional Conference and held a camp for middle school students last summer.
Roger Witherspoon is a journalist and author based in New York.