Teachers, medical students, and scientists are part of new initiatives aimed at bridging the scientific knowledge gap. A recent opinion piece in The Scientific American, which is focused on school closures, said The Virtual Tutoring Team is working to solve science’s diversity problem by producing free, live, and recorded K–12 content.
Courses put together by the team include science, math, coding, social studies, Spanish, music, exercise, study skills and career readiness, enrichment, and art. Schools in the Bronx, Harlem, Elmhurst in Queens, Washington, D.C. and other places are currently receiving the content.
One of the three authors of the op-ed is Robert Romanzi, founder of the Virtual Tutoring Team and an M.D. student at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Robert was a New York City teaching fellow prior to medical school. He also taught English as a Second Language (ESL) classes to first-generation immigrant students in public K–12 schools in the Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights, and Brownsville.
The other op-ed authors are Lala Tanmoy (Tom) Das and Briana Christophers. Lala and Brianna are both M.D.-Ph.D. students at the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program in New York City.
In his biography, Lala is described as passionate about health policy and issues pertaining to medical and science education. Brianna tweets regularly about science advocacy, medical education, diversity, and developmental biology @BriChristophers.
In addition, the authors mentioned the American Physician Scientists Association is providing videos by physician-scientists. Mini Lessons by Medical Scientists is available on YouTube.
“STEM fields have made critical contributions to COVID-19 response through research, technology and modeling,” they wrote. “However, at present, Hispanics hold only 6 percent of STEM jobs requiring bachelor’s degrees or higher, and Black people hold only 7 percent of those jobs, although those populations comprise 16 percent and 11 percent, respectively, of the overall workforce.”
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