Wayne State outreach initiatives touch community, students

Wayne State University is continuing its outreach into the region in a number of areas ranging from math to science to the arts.

The latest is the String Project@Wayne, an intensive teacher-training and string-instrument education program for Detroit-area students. The program pairs interns selected from the university's Music Department with Metro Detroit students between grades 3-7 for lessons in bass, viola, cello or violin.

The idea is twofold. First, to get more local students involved with both Wayne State and the music community. Second, to get more creatively inclined college students involved with the region to help staunch Metro Detroit's brain drain.

"It's really critical," says Laura Roelofs, associate professor of Music at Wayne State University. "When someone goes to school and gets a degree then that person just went to school there."

Wayne State is also one of the state's four flagship universities that is accelerating local development of leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math through an expansion of the Michigan-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. Wayne State helped begin the initiative in 2005 to significantly increase the number of under-represented minority students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. Nine community colleges are following Wayne State's lead in this effort.

Source: Laura Roelofs, associate professor of Music at Wayne State University
Writer: Jon Zemke

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