GEAR UP grant awarded

• By MARSHA SILLS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Feb 19, 2009 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

LAFAYETTE -- More than 2,000 Lafayette Parish sixth- and seventh-graders will be tracked from now until they graduate high school as part of a federal program that prepares students for college.

The Lafayette Parish School System was awarded a federal grant of $12 million over the next six years to track the students and offer academic enrichment experiences through the program, Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs.

The GEAR UP program focuses on intervention and enrichment to give middle school educational opportunities that encourage them to explore their academic interests with a goal of going to college.

“We find that this is a critical time in the child’s life. … We want to try to instill a desire for them to attend postsecondary at any early age,” said Suzanne Thibodeaux, coordinator of the parish GEAR UP.

The program was implemented this year at six of the parish’s 12 middle schools: N.P. Moss, Acadian, Scott, Judice, Carencro and Lafayette, based on the number of students there on free and reduced lunch.

“We’re going to provide them learning experiences they may not have,” Thibodeaux said. That includes summer art and math camps and field trips.

And this week, associates of the Smithsonian Institution visited the schools to share their expertise in biology and ecology.

For more than 30 years, the Smithsonian has had a “Scholars in the Schools” program to engage classroom students in the sciences and humanities.

The associates’ visit to Lafayette is the Smithsonian’s first partnership with GEAR UP, said Wallis Maria Mertes, regional programs coordinator of the Smithsonian Associates.

“This program today is the first of six years of partnering,” said Mertes.

Early Wednesday afternoon, the team was at Carencro Middle, where seventh graders like Joshua Rideaux, 13, and Jealen Allen, 13, learned about the wetlands in Louisiana from Karen McKee, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey National Wetlands Research Center.

The two boys said they were impressed with video and pictures of field experiments McKee shared that were taken following Hurricane Gustav.

“Some of the equipment they used measured how tall the (marsh) grass was and how much sun gets through,” Allen said.