Education

The 2022 STEM Kit

During the 2022 cycle the human practices team created a STEM kit to teach students about our project and give them a hands-on activity to learn some skills themselves. We piloted this kit with a local girl scout troop, members Allyson Ehlert and Mackenzie Harwood helped guide and teach the girls while performing the activity. Despite having fun and learning about our project the troupe leader suggested that the kit have more defined lessons and topics.

Members Allyson and Mackenzie running the 2022 STEM Kit

With that in mind this year our team decided to improve the kit, making it focused on the scientific method, and how to perform an experiment! Students can follow along as we “test” samples from the polluted Pine River, they must use their Observations to make a Hypothesis, and then test the sample to determine the Results. Access to the Becoming a Scientist STEM Kit is free and available for download here:2022 STEM Kit

Members Gabriella Corson and Mackenzie Harwood were able to attend many classrooms to teach students about our project and go through the new and improved STEM kit with them.

Member Gabriella Corson running the updated 2022 STEM Kit

The 2023 STEM Kit

With the success of the 2022 STEM Kit our team wished to create another STEM kit that provided a higher level lesson and activity. The 2023 STEM kit: Zooming in! teaches students about organisms and how we are made of organs, tissues and at the smallest levels cells. The kit includes a demonstration of zooming into the body to look at each level. The kit also includes an activity where students can build their own bacterial cells. This biology centered kit can be simplified for younger audiences or more in depth for advanced students. Access to the Zooming in! STEM Kit is free and available for download here: Zoom in on the Body!

Members Gabriella Corson and Mackenzie Harwood were able to pilot the STEM kit, and run though it many other times with students.

Members Mackenzie H. and Gabriella C. running the 2023 STEM Kit

Collectively the Alma iGEM team was able to visit 10 different classrooms during the 2023 cycle to run both the 2022 and 2023 STEM kits.

Science Blowout Bioart

During the beginning of the 2023 cycle the Alma iGEM team was approached by another student organization on Alma’s campus, the Chemistry club. The club wished to collaborate on an event where students from Shepard Elementary School in Shepard, Michigan came to Alma College for a day of science activities. The team was able to provide both the 2022 and 2023 STEM kits to be used as demonstrations for students. However, we wished to incorporate a multidisciplinary activity for the students as well. With this in mind we created the Bioart activity, Human Practices member Mackenzie Harwood took photographs of samples under the microscope and compiled them into a presentation for the students.

Figure 1. Crystalized Protein Sample 1

Figure 2. Crystalized Protein Sample 2

Figure 3. Sugar and Water Sample

The full presentation can be found here: Science Blowout.pptx

Then when shown the examples of BioArt students were encouraged to look into premade microscope slides and draw what they saw for their own piece of BioArt. This activity allowed students to learn how to use microscopes, and use their creativity to display biological samples.

Human Practices Member Mackenzie Harwood running the BioArt activity with students

Student Examples, creative renditions of Cheek Cell slides under the microscope polarized.

Science Literacy Challenge

As a pilot for a science literacy challenge aimed at the residents of Gratiot county, the Alma iGEM team created an initial quiz for students of Alma college to test their science literacy knowledge and skills. The questions themselves were fairly simple and aimed to get a good understanding of where Alma students stood in their knowledge, in the hopes that the quiz can eventually be used to collect science literacy data for all of Gratiot county. The quiz results were around 78% correct answers, showing us that Alma students are fairly proficient in science literacy. However, when asked if the quiz was at all challenging many students reported that they were STEM majors and did not find the quiz at all challenging. For the students that were not reported STEM majors, they said that the quiz was not challenging but they did learn new information. If you would like to complete a modified version of the Science Literacy Challenge follow the QR code below!

QR Code to the Science Literacy Challenge Quiz

Incorporating Public Health Concepts

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The poster for the Incorporating Public Health Concepts Presentation

As a part of National Public Health month, our team celebrated by creating a presentation to teach non-public health students how to incorporate public health concerns and policies into our research. The presentation was made and taught by Human Practices Member Alice Hutchins, who is a Public Health major. The goal was for us as iGEMers to learn about simple public health concepts and ways to look at our projects through a public health lens.

Alice Hutchins before giving her Public Health Presentation

In this presentation, the application of public health concepts is explored for the general science field. The general terms like “health,” “evidence-based practice,” “health promotion,” “risk factors,” “social determinants of health,” and “upstream” and “downstream” solutions. Then, the Health in All Policies (HiAP) was explored. The presentation covered the core pillars of Health in All Policies and guiding principles. The presentation also explained the challenges of implementing HiAP. Then both Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and Health Lens Analysis (HLA) were explained as means for HiAP. There was an overview of creations of HIAs or HLAs. Finally, there was a discussion with the audience on fields where HiAP could be applied, along with how to find health resources.The full presentation is available below:

Applying Public Health Concepts.pptx