When Ilsa Hoagland presented her research project to graduate students from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health’s (SPH) Division of Biostatistics and Health Data Science, she was a senior at Coon Rapids High School, and recalled feeling intimidated going into the presentation. “I was 17 and I’d never done anything like that before,” she recalled recently. “I didn’t have a strong background in statistics, and I was nervous that the grad students were just going to rip into my proposal.”
Instead, the SPH graduate students offered thoughtful feedback, helping Hoagland and her classmates refine their research question and strengthen the design of their study. The experience was part of a unique partnership between SPH and Coon Rapids High School that gives students the opportunity to conduct original public health research with guidance from graduate student mentors—a partnership that has introduced hundreds of students to the kind of science not available through textbooks or a traditional classroom curriculum.
For Hoagland, it also inspired a change in her career plans. Before taking the class, she imagined becoming a physician. But the project introduced her to a different side of science—one focused on improving the health of entire communities through research and data. Today, as she prepares for her second year in SPH’s master of public health program in epidemiology, she looks back on that high school project as a turning point.
“I originally thought I wanted to be a doctor,” she said. “When we got to that class, that was my first introduction to biostatistics and public health in general. All the science classes I’d taken before stayed strictly on the hard science, and we didn’t really get into the human aspect. Their class was the first time I thought, ‘This is something I should look into.’ ”
Bringing real-world research into the classroom
The class Hoagland is referring to is Ann and Luke Gliddon’s Biomedical Innovations course at Coon Rapids High School, where, since 2020, volunteer graduate students from SPH’s Division of Biostatistics & Health Data Science have served as research consultants, helping students develop research questions, design studies, interpret their findings, and present their work.
As former laboratory scientists themselves, Ann and Luke Gliddon wanted their students to experience science the way researchers do. Through a mutual connection, they partnered with SPH’s Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement (BCOE) committee to bring graduate student mentors into the classroom.
Students conduct their projects using The Islands, a virtual population that allows them to perform epidemiologic and public health studies that would be impossible in a traditional high school classroom. Working in teams, they develop their own research questions on topics that matter to them, such as whether secondhand smoke in the home affects children’s IQ, whether jogging with a significant other boosts endorphins more than jogging alone, how listening to versus playing music affects memory, whether having a pet is associated with higher GPAs among high school students. From there, students write grant proposals, receive feedback from graduate student consultants, revise their study designs, and ultimately present their findings to the same graduate students who guided them throughout the project.
“Some of our students will go into medicine or public health research,” Luke Gliddon said. “But regardless of where they end up, they all benefit from understanding how a study is designed and how to interpret the results. That’s the experience we’re trying to give them.”
Knowing their work will be reviewed by graduate students also changes how students approach the project, Ann said. “By the time they’re seniors, they’ve had both of us as teachers, and some have had us multiple times. They don’t care that much about what we have to say anymore,” Ann said with a laugh. “But when they know an actual graduate student in biostatistics is going to review their grant proposal, the quality of their work goes way up because they want to impress someone they see as a real professional.”
Creating career pathways
Anne Eaton, an associate professor in SPH’s Division of Biostatistics & Health Data Science and faculty lead on the Biostatistics Community Outreach and Engagement (BCOE) committee—a group of faculty, staff and graduate students dedicated to building partnerships beyond the University—said collaborations like this one introduce students to an entirely new career option. Eaton said that programs like the Coon Rapids High School partnership grew out of conversations within the division about how students discover careers in biostatistics in the first place.
“So many people we know who work in biostatistics say, ‘My mom was a biostatistician,'” Eaton said. “If we want a more diverse group of biostatisticians, there needs to be a way for students to know this career exists,” she said.
That goal is particularly relevant at Coon Rapids High School, where about half of students are students of color, more than half qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and many will be the first in their families to attend college. By introducing students to biostatistics while they are still in high school, the partnership can expose students from a wide range of backgrounds to a field they might otherwise never encounter.
Eaton said the field offers strong career opportunities with competitive salaries, job stability, and the chance to improve people’s lives through research. “It’s a pretty great career in a lot of ways,” she said, “and the BCOE committee is working in schools and other places in the community to get the word out and help more people see it as a possibility for themselves.”
The partnership also benefits the graduate students, Eaton said, by giving them an opportunity to mentor students as they refine research questions, think critically about study design, and communicate statistical concepts in ways that are constructive and accessible. “It’s a unique experience for our grad students to be the expert in the room,” Eaton said. “When they go out into their jobs, they’ll have to do that. This partnership gives them a chance to step into that role in a supportive environment.”
While the partnership helps graduate students prepare for their future careers, the Gliddons say it can also shape how high school students envision their own future career possibilities.The Gliddons said former students have gone on to careers ranging from nursing and medicine to dentistry, physical therapy, and data science. Even for students who ultimately choose other paths, they said meeting graduate students in biostatistics helps make careers in research and public health feel attainable.
“For many of our students, this is probably the first time they’ve met someone they can really connect with who’s in a PhD program,” Ann Gliddon said. “The graduate students are young enough that our students can picture themselves in that role. It opens up a new possibility for them.”
Now preparing for a career in epidemiology, Hoagland hopes to someday return to the partnership as a graduate student mentor herself. “I would love to give back to that program,” she said.
