About Us
The I-HELP Liberia Project is centered at Hunter College High School in New York City. Teacher Asumana Jabateh Randolph, who was born and raised in Liberia, has been working with Hunter students to send items to schools throughout Liberia since 1994. He has collected and shipped containers of school supplies, laboratory equipment, and other items including shoes and clothing for students.
We believe that it’s important for Liberian schools to rebuild their laboratories and put an emphasis on science education, because the reasoning, logic, and analysis that can be learned through scientific experiements is integral to any profession.
We've taken particular interest in laboratory sensors made by Vernier, which connect to Texas Instruments graphing calculators—the kind that most high school students in the US are required to have. A single set of sensors and a calculator can perform most of the functions of a school laboratory, while being portable and less expensive. We encourage schools in Liberia to
seek out such technology, but more generally we would like to promote science and inspire interest in learning and teaching this field. A surprising number of interesting experiments can be done with common materials!
In February 2009, as part of the I-HELP Liberia Project, Mr. Randolph organized his first trip to Liberia with students. With him were with David Bauer, a former Hunter High School student currently pursuing a PhD at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and Heidi Baumgartner, a current senior at Hunter. They traveled to schools throughout several counties in Liberia conducting workshops for science teachers.
In April, another series of workshops in Liberia was organized by Mr. Randolph. Hunter seniors Claire Nan, Gillian Collins, and Heidi Baumgartner helped to conduct the workshops. Math teacher Eliza Kuberska also came on this trip.
Among the students who formerly worked for Mr. Randolph are Adam Cohen and Ben Rapoport. Adam is now a professor at Harvard University, and Ben is a PhD candidate at Harvard Medical School. The two of them traveled to schools and universities in Liberia in June 2009 to assess the needs of Liberian scientists, science teachers, and science students, and to work with them to develop locally sustainable ways of improving Liberian science and science education.
Left to right: Eliza Kuberska, Claire Nan, Asumana Jabateh Randolph, Gillian Collins, Heidi Baumgartner
Left to right: Ben Rapoport, Adam E. Cohen, Sangay Faeflen from the Ministry of Education
David Bauer