Although American students increasingly lag those of other countries in math and science achievement, one Baltimore City group has for 15 years striven to ensure that its city’s middle and high schoolers could at least buck the trend.
“Ingenuity was developed to serve the Baltimore City public schools by providing very high-caliber mathematics and science [instruction],” said Dolores Costello, director of Ingenuity Project Inc., a five-employee, $1 million-a-year nonprofit dedicated to making city students nationally competitive in math and science.
“There was concern that our children were not getting the very best,” she added. “So it was decided by a panel of scientists, mathematicians, foundation members and educators under the guidance of the Abell Foundation that a program be started in middle schools.”
Launched in 1994 with a $92,600 Abell Foundation grant, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute-quartered Ingenuity Project, in conjunction with the city school system, began its pedagogical push with the sixth grades at West Baltimore and Southeast middle schools.
Since then, for commuting reasons, it has moved the program to Hamilton, Mount Royal and Roland Park middle schools, and expanded it to sixth to eighth grades. It also has a high school program at BPI.
“My son is in the high school program and my daughter is in the middle school program,” said Margaret Jennings, an East Baltimore mother of a BPI 10th-grader and Roland Park Middle School seventh-grader. “It’s an excellent program. I am so thrilled that my kids are in it.”
The program, which uses 20 specially trained, mostly city public school teachers, has to date graduated about 1,400 middle schoolers, 60 percent of whom go on to BPI. It has 135 high schoolers and 300 middle schoolers enrolled, and recently received a $50,000 grant from the Weinberg Foundation for a fifth-grade program in zebra fish embryology.
Selected students must keep up regular studies and take accelerated math and science courses to stay in the program.
High schoolers must also identify a research project and a willing university scientist-mentor by sophomore year. They then work on the project during junior year for submission to a national competition, such as the Intel Science Talent Search, senior year.
“I love [the program],” said Deborah Harris, a Baltimore City mother of a BPI 11th-grader. “My son has grown so much in the field of science. Right now he’s actually doing [sleep] research at Hopkins Bayview. I know without this program, he wouldn’t have gotten to this point.”
AT A GLANCE
Ingenuity Project
1400 W. Cold Spring Lane
Baltimore, MD 21209
410-662-8665, ingenuityproject.org
