RAM Students Doing Research Across the Country and Across the Ocean
June 19, 2018
FSC’s Research Aligned Mentorship (RAM) program – funded by the US Department of Education with a goal of significantly increasing four-year graduation rates – has sent 24 students into the field this summer to do research, as close as the campus and as far away as France.
The most innovative aspect of the RAM program is the placement of students in experiential learning/mentored research experiences. That’s illustrated by students working with FSC faculty on research projects as diverse as educational inequality on LI; stop-and-frisk data; and an engineering project that uses a Lego machine. Off campus, students are working as far away as Paris, Nebraska, California and Miami.
One on-campus project has teamed criminal justice chair Dr. LaNina Cooke with student Skye Bergen, as they examine stop-and-frisk data as a predictor of stops of juveniles.
“This will benefit my education because I plan on getting a master’s degree in criminal justice at John Jay College after I graduate from Farmingdale,” said Bergen.
Tahj Amonds is working with sociology professor Dr. Aaron Howell. Their research examines the relationship between race, ethnicity and class, and educational outcomes such as test scores and school funding.
Said Amonds: “We are constructing a unique, Long Island-specific data set that allows us to test race, ethnicity and class as determinants of school district inequality.” The pair will present their findings at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society.
Bioscience major Tonuza Ahmed is working at the University of Miami. Lailani Gibson, business management, is doing her research at the Université Paris IV Sorbonne, and applied mathematics major Erick Elias is in Washington, DC. Other students are at the University of Nebraska, Rutgers, and hospitals across the region.
Dr. Erwin Cabrera, associate director of RAM, summed it up this way: “Allowing students the chance to pursue research/applied learning experience early in their career will allow RAM scholars to have a deeper understanding and demonstrate strong research, analytical, problem-solving, and project management skills; increase knowledge about the subject of the research project; learn how to collaborate with others, exhibiting respect for the perspectives and contributions of others; and gain increased clarity about career and graduate/professional school options.
“It is also important to highlight the work our FSC faculty do with our students. We have wonderful faculty on this campus that help develop these young people’s potential.”
