Who is SAMM? Or what is SAMM? And why does SAMM improve the rigor in advanced science education classes at East Canton High School?

SAMM — Science and Math on the Move — is a program run for Stark County’s math students and science students that, among many features, loans sophisticated scientific equipment to schools for math and science classes that otherwise might not be able to afford it. Lisa Gothard, Advanced Placement and dual-credit science teacher at East Canton High, says that her students “are taking math and science courses they could not take without SAMM equipment.” That’s because the rigor of these college-credit courses require the use of sophisticated devices such as a gas chromatograph and gel electrophoresis equipment. She says that East Canton High could not afford to buy the equipment.

SAMM provides sophisticated scientific equipment for science and math students in Stark County

A gas chromatograph allows students to identify and analyze the various elements in a chemical compound. Gel electrophoresis allows students to analyze and match DNA samples. During a lesson this year in Ms. Gothard’s class, the science students used gel electrophoresis techniques to analyze two DNA samples and match them against the DNA of a fictitious criminal suspect, just as a police crime lab would do.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Ms. Gothard is training criminologists. “It’s just a molecular biology technique that every molecular biology student should know.” Which is why she has to teach it in order for her biology students to prepare adequately for the Advanced Placement test that could earn them college credit. Loaned SAMM equipment also enables her science students to participate in rigorous work for science fairs.

This is a story that could be repeated at high schools throughout Stark County. The origins of SAMM go back nearly 16 years. It was in 1994 that Jack Timken of the Timken Foundation talked to the Science and Math Council of the Education Enhancement Partnership (now the Stark Education Partnership) about the lending of sophisticated scientific equipment to schools. Such projects were being operated at that time by Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., and at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. These programs loaned equipment to high schools around the college and university.

Stark County decided to establish a program by and for the public school districts in Stark County. Its original funding came from all the leading charitable foundations in the community, through the organization now known as the Stark Education Partnership. For a more information on the SAMM program that lists all the original funders and supplemental funders from various educational foundations, download the Science and Math on the Move Brochure for Stark County.

Funding of the program continues through various grants and user fees paid by the participating school districts.

“The program originally focused on high school mathematics and science students, where equipment such as ours was too expensive for individual schools to own,” said Mike Bayer, mathematics specialist at the Stark County Educational Service Center and the first director of the SAMM program.

“We now serve science and math students in K through 12 (kindergarten through senior year of high school), said Melissa Marconi, who succeeded Bayer as SAMM director. “We are the only K-12 math and science center in the country,” she added.

In addition to loaning expensive and sophisticated scientific and mathematics equipment, SAMM also prepares science curriculum kits for all grade levels throughout Stark County. The SAMM staff, working out of R.G. Drage Career Center near Massillon, even grow plants and raise animals, such as Madagascar hissing cockroaches that can be used in Stark County science classes.

Raising the giant cockroaches, by the way, beats buying them for $9 to $11 apiece from a science supply company. They’re easy to enjoy when they’re inside a glass box and you are outside it.