During these three days, a group of 11 middle school teachers from the New York State areas of Syracuse, Tully, Ithaca and New York City met in Clark Hall (the new home to CLASSE Outreach) and went through a series of science and engineering activities put together by the outreach team.
Self-made tape measurers hang suspended from the ceiling, stretched to reach the tops of the tables with 10cm increments clearly marked. Kids take turns vertically propelling the balls using student-made ball-launchers. This was the scene in the eXploration station this past month when first graders from Fall Creek Elementary School participated in bimonthly visits to Xraise at Cornell during the past school year. Teachers Chris Bell and Abigail Bokaer brought their students, sometimes riding the bus and sometime walking up the hill, to participate in these science investigations.
But for Gabrielle Long and Yuexia ‘Luna’ Lin, two research students working at CHESS this summer, the opportunity arose midway through their third week on the job. It is rare for students to have the chance to dismantle and build a beamline, and is definitely worth putting their personal research on hold for a weekend, reflected Richard Gillilan, one of Luna and Gabrielle’s advisers. The students worked with Richard and staff members Mike Cook, Scott Smith, and Bill Miller to transition the F1 hutch from a crystallography station to a BioSAXS station.
GERLS is an acronym developed by the program’s leaders Lora Hine, director of outreach at Xraise, and Claire Fox, education coordinator at IG. The acronym stands for “Girl Engineers Really Love Science!”
The camp had 11 girls participate from a number of area schools in Tompkins County. Additionally, several female mentors* from Cornell University, Ithaca College, and downtown institutions worked with the girls throughout the week.
THE FACTS ON WOMEN IN STEM
Over the course of three days, the teachers participated in a variety of lessons and activities geared towards basic engineering, problem solving and scientific thinking. This Science Snapshot provided teachers with ideas and activities to better implement the principles of engineering in their classrooms, and allowed them to dry-run prepared materials. The focus of their investigations? To eventually design and build a device to measure light penetration. The teachers were then able to test their designs in Cayuga Lake aboard the Floating Classroom.
The Sept. 27 workshop was one in a series of professional growth and development opportunities for science teachers, offered by the outreach program of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education (CLASSE).
On its maiden voyage out of Ithaca, the Ithaca Physics Bus, whose mission is to bring science to the public, brought some 20 exhibits that students in the JunkGenies Greater Ithaca
Summer undergraduate research students at CLASSE have been actively influencing the sphere of science education across campus and the community. During their brief time at CLASSE, these students are shaping the research that occurs in laboratory spaces, showcasing their efforts and understanding in conference rooms, and driving the conversations and questions that occur in communal areas. In the laboratory, student devote hours of their time combing through the literature, contributing to the investigation, collecting data, and compiling their results.
Following through on intentions outlined in our 2012 NSF proposal, our team sowed the seeds and fanned the flames that ultimately led to the founding of a dedicated drop-in space where kids can build and cultivate an identity in science. Opened last October at a new low-income housing facility, Ithaca’s Free Science Workshop is providing self-directed exploration, experimentation, and engineering to these families.
These blended geographic features serve as a metaphor for the evolving college community, where Native American students and those of European descent have converged to obtain a higher education at Fort Lewis College, FLC, one of the top ranked public liberal arts institutions in the country.