Interactive youth science workshops benefit student participants and graduate student mentors

by Pallavi Kompella, Brant Gracia, Lucy LeBlanc, Shelly Engelman, Chinmayee Kulkarni, Niral Desai, Viviana June, Stephen March, Sarah Pattengale, Gabriel Rodriguez-Rivera, Seung Woo Ryu, Isabel Strohkendl, Pooja Mandke, Greg Clark Science communication and outreach are essential for training the next generation of scientists and raising public awareness for science. Providing effective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational outreach to students in classrooms is challenging because of the need t o form partnerships with teachers, the time commitment required for the presenting scientist, and the limited class time allotted for presentations. In our Present Your Ph.D. Thesis to a 12-Year Old outreach project, our novel solution to this problem is hosting a youth science workshop (YSW) on our university campus. The YSW is an interpersonal science communication and outreach experience in which graduate students from diverse scientific disciplines introduce middle and high school students to their cutting-edge research and mentor them to develop a white-board presentation to communicate t he research to the workshop audience. Our assessment of the YSW indicated that participating young students expressed significantly more positive attitudes toward science and increased motivation to work in a STEM career after attending the workshop. Qualitative follow-up interviews with participati ng graduate students’ show that even with minimal time commitment...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research