Biology Curriculum
We developed a biology curriculum to teach high school and middle school students the basics of biology that aren't reinforced in school. Through this, we hoped that more people would be inspired by the life sciences and would want to pursue their education in this field. This exposure would ultimately help students in the future as they navigate through more sciences and learn complicated concepts. Taking examples from Khan Academy and study.com, we developed this curriculum, using their videos and supplements. Beyond the lectures, we also created presentations for the students and worksheets they could work on. Learning that interactive games would boost student engagement, we also made card games to teach them about organelles and collector cards to learn more about bacteria.
Impact from Us
- Exposure to basic biology foundationals
- Inspiring the youth to pursue studies in the life sciences
- Reinforcing education, especially within biology
Impact on Us
- Motivated us to continue and expand our efforts
- Reinforced our own knowledge on biology concepts as we taught other students
- Reflects the success of this biology curriculum, as we will continue it next year
Creative Science Initiative
We had initially started the Creative Science Initiative as a prep group for the iGEM competition. However, after explaining our project from the last two years within the first two weeks, we quickly found that many people didn't know what we were talking about. It was important for us to go through the biology concepts that related to our project before we continued any further. This also meant talking about lab processes and providing people with the opportunity to come and work in our lab so that they can gain exposure.
Impact from Us
- Teaching biology concepts that aren't reinforced in school
- Gaining exposure to lab work and wet lab processes
- A lot of students don't have the resources to learn about biology
Impact on Us
- Inspired us to develop the biology curriculum
- Created a more well-knit community of inspired young scientists
- Motivated us to continue bringing opportunities to the youth
Kentucky Science Center
We first reached out to the Kentucky Science Center to talk to their students about what environmental contamination was. When we learned that our age group audience was 8-10-year-olds, we realized we had to tremendously simplify our project presentation. We address things from recycling and reusing to what water pollution is and how our solution helps with mitigating the issue. We inspired the students to be a part of the change, influencing them to want to help their environment and avoid harming it further.
Impact from Us
- The youth are inspired to be a part of the change
- Raising awareness early about environmental contamination
- Influencing people to want to help their environment and not harm it
Impact on Us
- Motivated us to keep educating the youth
- Interactive games helped us with student engagement
- How inspired the kids were made us proud of what we've completed
E Gray St Farmer's Market
We decided to reach out to the E Gray Street Farmer's Market because of its connections to more rural areas of our state. This farmers' market is currently working with farms all over the state to support a "plant is medicine" movement. While they grow their crops, they're simultaneously growing medicinal herbs in hopes of revisiting traditional methods for ailments. This was important to raise awareness since farmers are among some of our most important target demographics. If we can raise awareness about PFAS to them, we can help those who need it the most. This farmers' market was also located next to a research lab, so one of our other audiences was researchers who didn't know a lot about what PFAS were.
Impact from Us
- Talking to farmers about what PFAS is and what it can do to farms
- Raising awareness about the "plant is medicine" movement
- Educating researchers on the harms of PFAS
Impact on Us
- The "plant is medicine" movement is a new avenue to explore in the future
- Revisiting traditional methods might not be so bad after all, as it was inspired by research
- Motivated us to continue our wet lab research to back up farmer movements
Rotary Presentation
The Rotary is a service organization with over 1.5 million members across the world. Being able to present to its members in the Louisville chapter opened several avenues for us to raise awareness. In fact, one of the members is the head of the Kentucky African American Heritage Association and requested that we come and speak at their conference as well, due to the lack of healthy and safe water in several African countries. Being able to speak to organizations like this will help us expand our impact and raise awareness in several communities.
Impact from Us
- Talking to different organizations about scientific findings about PFAS
- Raising awareness about what the public can do to mitigate exposure to PFAS
- Educating service organizations on how they can help fight contamination
Impact on Us
- Gaining exposure to new ideas and challenges our community faces
- Exposure to funding organizations and eligibility for more grants
- Talking to service organizations and working together to raise awareness
Green Baptist Church Health Event
The Green Baptist Church is a church in the Louisville area that hopes to expand community outreach as much as possible. Being able to partner with them as they have health-related events is a great way to talk about PFAS and its effects on our community. We had interactive games to talk about the spread of oxygen and how germs can kill our immune systems, and more. By being able to reach out to both the youth and the adults, we can raise awareness among more of the general public.
Impact from Us
- Exposing underserved populations to basic health resources and biology concepts
- Raising awareness among the general public on PFAS and environmental contaminants
- Talking to our community about PFAS and its effects on our community
Impact on Us
- Being able to interact with the general public more regularly
- The opportunity to inspire more and more people to save the environment
- Motivated us to continue our efforts to raise awareness
Essential Bioinformatics Workshop
The KY-INBRE Bioinformatics workshop is a one-week course offered by the University of Kentucky, helping to educate individuals working in a command-line environment, as well as familiarizing them with tools such as assembly and blast. Having the opportunity to have members from our team mentor throughout the experience served as a great way to get to know biologists and other people in this field, in addition to educating others about the tools that we ourselves used during our project. Being a part of this experience allowed our team to have a greater understanding of bioinformatics, as well as help our community by guiding local biologists and computer scientists to learn essential tools of bioinformatics with this workshop.
Impact from Us
- Guided and helped workers to learn the tools essential to bioinformatics
- Close the gap of unfamiliarity with bioinformatics by making it more approachable
- Exposed more individuals to computational biology and its benefits
Impact on Us
- Gaining exposure to new methods in bioinformatics
- Learning new ways to use the tools we already use
- Helped us to network with other biologists and computer scientists
Milo the Monkey
We collaborated with a collegiate-level iGEM team, NYU-Abu-Dhabi, to write a storybook that follows a monkey named Milo as he navigates through changes in his environment. Milo gets really sick from drinking local water one day and realizes that it's due to PFAS contaminating their water sources. As they move around, finding new streams, they come to realize that PFAS is everywhere. We decided to take this story to elementary and middle schools to raise awareness on PFAS, and more generally, the idea of environmental contamination. This way, we can educate younger kids on the effects this has on our communities, but more importantly, ourselves.
Impact from Us
- Educating the younger generation on PFAS and environmental contamination
- Raising awareness among the general public on what environmental contamination is
- Inspiring more people to be a part of the change
Impact on Us
- Being able to meet with the youth
- The youth inspired us to keep educating more and more people
- Meeting different people who could help us raise awareness