Science Questions from Second Graders

The following is a partial list of the questions asked to me and my classmate today while teaching 2nd graders about the 5 senses:

1. Do we get to try all the [5 senses] stations?
2. Do you like candy? Do you like sour patch kids?
3. Do you like lemonade?
4. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
5. Why are we eating paper? [When passing out the taste test strips]
6. Are you poisoning us?!! [After eating the bitter-tasting PTC test strip]
7. What's on your face? [Pointing to a handful of pimples on my forehead]
8. Can you still taste if you are death [sic]? [I think this student meant 'deaf']
9. How does hair grow?
10. Why do stars glow?
11. What is a shooting star?
12. Does Pluto still exist?
13. Do you have fun?
14. Do you still live with your parents?
15. Do you have a boyfriend?
16. How old are you?
17. Are you two [myself and my classmate] sisters?
18. How do tornados get strong enough to throw houses and basketballs and stuff?
19. Why do we get storms?
20. When are you coming back?

Can't wait to see what they come up with for the next time I visit!

SEP Volunteering: Year 3

I've written about UCSF's Science-Education Partnership (SEP) program previously.  Since arriving at UCSF in 2011, I've been involved with two semester-long programs. My first year I was involved with the Bio&Chem Teach program, where I was partnered with a 7th grade life-science classroom. Last year I participated in the STAT program and was placed with a 4th grade classroom. 

This is my third year volunteering with SEP. After some scheduling difficulties, my classmate and I were placed in a pair of 2nd grade classrooms. Although both teachers are new to the SEP program, they brought a lot of great ideas to our first planning meeting and I am incredibly excited to be working with their students. 

Our first visit to the classroom to meet the students was last week. Both classrooms had great questions for us and were excited to hear we were coming back four more times over the course of the semester. We've planned a series of lessons progressing from good/bad bacteria to human intestines, with lots of interesting experiments along the way. Hopefully by the end of the school-year I can convince some of them to stick with science!

Bay Area Science Festival Wrap-Up

The Bay Area Science Festival is a 10-day event organized by UCSF, UCSF's Science and Health Education Partnership, and a number of other co-sponsors. The main goal of the event is to bring science and science education to the public--though lectures, debates, workshops and a number of other activities throughout the Bay Area. This is the 3rd year the Festival is being held, and like the previous two years, I found time to volunteer at some of the interactive science booths on the "Discover Day" at AT&T Park. 

Look at that awesome selfie where I shamelessly promote the Twin Cities

Last year I was involved with "Cabbage Juice Chemistry" booth. Essentially, using cabbbage juice as a handy pH indicator for various household items and asking children to predict if something was acidic or alkaline. This year, I was trained on the "Joint and Bone Models" booth. In our activity, we wanted to demonstrate the importance and complexity of our hands. To demonstrate this, we would slowly impair a child's ability to grasp and write by taping their fingers together with masking tape. The most drastic impairment, many children found, was the loss of their opposable thumb. After the exercise, many of them eagerly postulated why their thumb allowed them to do certain tasks that a pet cat or dog might not be able to accomplish. 

I find that I don't think about the loss of my thumb very often. Yet after volunteering with this booth and seeing some of the models, I am becoming increasingly grateful for my opposable digit. Especially considering that many tasks I perform in the lab, such as pipetting, would be extremely difficult without my thumb. (Although, if the thatsnothowyoupipet Tumblr is any indication, I'm sure I could find a creative way to transfer liquids). 

Aside from volunteering, I was also able to attend a few of the events myself. One of the last events of the festival takes place tomorrow evening. Astronaut Chris Hadfield is speaking at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. For those of you who don't know Col. Hadfield, he did a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" that received over 10 million views in the first few days it was posted (I've included it below for your viewing enjoyment). 

Guess whose trivia team took first place and won tickets to the event?

NeXXT Scholars Program

As an undergraduate, I was involved with Macalester's Women in Science and Math student organization. One of our goals was to create a network of both Macalester community members and science alumna to support women majoring in math and science. So when I received an email the other week about the NeXXT Program, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, I was excited to learn about a new opportunity to be involved in academic mentoring for the next generation. 

For the second year in a row, the US State Department, in collaboration with the New York Academy of Sciences, is sponsoring the NeXXT Scholars Program. This program aims to increase opportunities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields for women in both the US and countries with predominantly Muslim populations. 

The Academy has paired with over 30 women's colleges in the United States to match incoming freshmen women pursuing a bachelors degree in a STEM academic field with an international counterpart. In addition to networking with each other and other NeXXT Scholars, both students are also paired individually with an established mentor in their field.

The mentor (a graduate student, postdoctoral scholar, or working professional) assists the scholar with career development, networking, and locating both research and skill building opportunities. Not only are the scholars able to serve as international ambassadors, but this program also helps them build skills they will need to become leaders in the respective fields. 

I am writing all of this because the NeXXT community is currently looking for female STEM professionals (particularly graduate students and postdocs). If this is something that is interesting to you, I highly encourage you to apply. The link for the mentor application can be found here. 

I chose to submit a mentor application for the NeXXT program, not only because I feel it's important to promote women in scientific fields, but also because I've had such positive experiences in a mentee role*.  Speaking from personal experiences, this type of relationship is invaluable. Not only have my mentors provided feedback on things related to science (coaching powerpoint presentations, acting as a sounding board for unusual experimental results, reading drafts of proposals, etc.) but many of them have also given me fantastic life advice. The most recent individual who took time to mentor me grew up in a similarly sized hometown and (like me) went to a liberal arts institution before attending graduate school in the Bay Area. When asked, he was always genuinely happy to offer advice on any topic, and having someone with a similar background certainly made my transition into graduate school much easier. I hope in time that I can provide the same level of encouragement to the next generation. 

*Though I was not involved in the NeXXT program as an undergraduate, I benefited from several fantastic mentors  during the course of my bachelors degree.  

Volunteering with SEP

One of the things that I'm really excited about is teaching. Teaching is something I did throughout high school and college, both as a tutor and a more formal Teaching Assistant. I really enjoy that "Aha!" moment, when a student has been struggling with a particular concept for a long time, and it finally clicks with them. The other thing that I am really passionate about is science outreach. There have been a number of studies exploring the reasons why people shy away from science, or why the reasons why certain groups are underrepresented in various fields. I'm not going to get into this topic too much in this post, sufficient to say that I think early exposure to science is critical. And what better way to combine early exposure to science and teaching that through volunteering in public schools!

UCSF has a program called "Science and Health Education Partnership" (SEP). The basic idea behind the program is to pair students/postdocs with a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. The scientist-teacher team then plans and executes a series of lessons throughout the semester. Sometime programs last a few months and the scientists teach just 4-6 lessons, whereas other programs last the entire school year. 

So far I've been involved in two semester-long programs during my time at UCSF. As a first-year grad student, I was involved in the Bio&ChemTeach program. I was paired with a 7th grade Life Science classroom, along with two other students from my graduate program. The school where we taught was ranked in the bottom 5% of schools in California, and served mostly students of Latino decent. Our lessons were designed to fit into their existing curriculum--and thus didn't really follow a theme or share continuity with each other.

One of my favorite lessons from last spring was entitled "A Day in the Life." We asked the students to describe various characteristics shared by scientists. We kept a list of their ideas on the chalkboard. As would be expected, the students came up with many popular stereotypes: geeky, no friends, pale from working all day in the lab, evil geniuses, (and my personal favorite) "tall socks and crazy hair!" We quickly broke down some of these stereotypes with help from this Tumblr: This is What A Scientist Looks Like. The students were still a bit incredulous, as many of them had never considered that scientists were anything other than white males. 

We had also put together a slide show of "A Day in the Life." I literally took a camera to work and documented my day down to the minute. Some of the slides were serious--photographs of me preparing a reaction in a round-bottom flask, or pipetting compounds into a 96 well plate. Some of the photos were silly--giving bunny ears to an unsuspecting lab tech or pretending to sword fight with paper towel tubes after lunch. Mostly we tried to show activities like attending seminar with classmates, performing an experiment, or eating lunch with my friends--all of the types of things they do in school. At the end of the slide show, we also had some photos from activities I enjoy outside of the lab: hiking in the Grand Tetons; playing rugby; swing dancing. My partner and I also took the time to emphasize that neither one of us got "the best" grades in science classes--but that we stuck with it because it was something we enjoyed.  

For many of the students, this slide show and our admission of average grades was a revelation. The discussion we had at the end of our lesson was rowdy! They talked excitedly about different types of science fields, frequently interrupting each other to ask my partner or I questions about our hobbies or the classes we took in high school to prepare to study science. More importantly in my book, they no longer saw science as an unattainable career path pursued only by socially-awkward white men. 

This spring, I am involved in SEP's STAT program, which stands for "Scientist-Teacher Action Teams." I was paired with a 4th-grade classroom along with another student who is in UCSF's Neuroscience grad program. I will save the details of our lessons for another time because this post is already too long. But needless to say, I am excited to be back in the classroom and excited to expose elementary schoolers to the joys of science.


Getting Involved in the Bay Area:
1) UCSF Science and Health Education Partnership
2) Bay Area Science Festival
3) UCB Lawrence Hall of Science
4) Community Resources for Science