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In the summer of 2021, professors from Virginia Tech and UVA, in partnership with the City of Roanoke’s Sustainability Coordinator and Roanoke City Public Schools, facilitated a 2-week summer STEM program with students ages 12 -14 enrolled in the Roanoke City Public Schools Summer Enrichment Program. Students were given hands-on experience using urban sensing technologies such as handheld weather sensors and drones to build understanding of the correlation between materials and vegetation and temperature. In addition to learning to collect, use and contextualize scientific data, students also carried out interviews, and engaged in planning solutions to urban heat in their neighborhoods.
Evidence was found that heat is indeed a problem in Northwest Roanoke, with students describing serious health-related problems. Identified problems included physical discomfort and impacts to mood which resulted in coping mechanisms like freezing water bottles in the refrigerator to sleep with at night, fighting over electric fans, and sleeping on the ground to keep cool. An interesting finding of the initial engagement with Roanoke middle school students was that the act of using scientific data within urban planning processes/participatory mapping was associated with increased perception of heat as a socio-environmental issue, rather simply a personal issue of feeling too hot.