SCIENCE OUTREACHThe Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Embryology has a longstanding commitment to Science Outreach. In 1989, Maxine Singer, then president of Carnegie, founded First Light, a Saturday science school for children in Washington D.C. This was the start of the Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) whose goal is to encourage interest in science among school children and teachers in Washington, DC. * Carnegie’s Department of Embryology is host to several High School Students from the City’s pre-eminent Math and Science High School, Baltimore Polytechnic High School. Students come to work on research projects in our laboratories under the mentorship of post-doctoral fellows and faculty. * Carnegie Investigator Dr. Marnie Halpern developed a science outreach program "Women Serious About Science" together with science teachers at Baltimore's Polytechnic Institute, with the goal of encouraging more girls to pursue research careers and to dispel stereotypes about scientists. Several times a month, on a voluntary basis over their lunch period, students meet with engineers, physicists, cell biologists, geneticists, astronomers, neuroscientists, forensic scientists, etc. - all accomplished women in their respective fields. By providing girls with these important female role models at a time when they are making college decisions, sparks their interest in taking science courses in college and introduces them to a myriad of career options in biomedical research, engineering and the physical sciences. * BioEYES, whose Co-Creator Dr. Steven Farber also a Staff Scientist here at Embryology, is growing by leaps and bounds! This year Carnegie BioEYES will train over 50 teachers and reach over 6,000 students in Baltimore City, Howard County, and Baltimore County. Baltimore County Public Schools is the first to adopt BioEYES system wide by hiring one of our trained Master Teachers, Bo Dunlap, as a full time BioEYES Educator to ultimately serve over 3,400 County students during this school year. Carnegie BioEYES has piloted a new 7th grade curriculum using the Zebrfish embryos to study the environment. Called Your Watershed, Your Backyard, this unit aims to raise awareness of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and how pollution affects the organisms living there. We are partnering with three watershed organizations in this endeavor, The Gwynns Falls Watershed Association, The Jones Falls Watershed Association, and The Herring Run Watershed Association. Carnegie BioEYES is currently working with local teachers to develop a 1-2 day curriculum for pre-K and K students, which they can run without one of our educators. In January 2010, we will be working with a group of teachers from The Hearing and Speech Agency’s Gateway School to develop a special needs version of BioEYES.
For more information on Carnegie BioEYES, please contact Susan Artes. |
