Engaging with the public and learning from the community is just as important as learning about a topic through scientific literature. Through engaging with various community leaders and organizations, we learned about how we can use synthetic biology to solve local problems here in Ithaca, New York. Throughout the past year our team promoted STEM education through social media posts and livestreams. We hosted various events including multiple high school seminars, a local Sciencecenter booth for children, and college student speaking sessions.
- Keeping children engaged through activities while Adapting the Sciencenter activities to accommodate children ages 4-16 was challenging. Altering the terminology to increase understanding based on age and adding imagery that younger children could relate to helped facilitate better learning.
- Events such as HOSA seminars and the Sciencecenter booth continued to inspire us with the excitement of the youth for synthetic biology and its applications in their lives.
- Innovation is happening every day. Through consistently talking with professionals in the field and updating the public during education and outreach events we can share scientific innovation.
Outreach to our younger audience was achieved through collaboration with the local sciencenter. We combined both verbal and hands-on learning in amini lecture. Our team started by describing what collagen is, and then moved to depicting what synthetic biologists do. We completed the presentation by talking about our project, which allowed the kids to connect their new knowledge of synthetic science to bigger world pictures. Our feedback from this outreach was highly positive, with the only critique being to make the information very clear.
Cornell iGEM was invited to speak to a few classes at Cornell University. We spoke to freshmen in engineering who were interested in learning more about synthetic biology. During the class we discussed what iGEM does and how we use synthetic biology to solve real world problems. Since the majority of freshmen have no prior knowledge of iGEM, it was exciting to introduce them to the field and provide them with an overview of what our team does. Many of the freshmen had questions about iGEM that helped the team improve. When the students asked clarifying questions about our past projects we changed our outline to incorporate more details in future class speaking sessions. We also updated our presentation with more details about the wet lab procedures associated with our team since so many students were interested in hearing more. The ENGRG 1050 classes were a great opportunity to educate more people about iGEM and improve our communication skills.
Cornell iGEM has been active on social media throughout the year. Our mission has focused on educating the public about synthetic biology, and also explaining our current project. We selected various members of the five subteams to post “A Day in the Life” stories focusing on what life as a Cornell iGEM member is like. Wet Lab, Product Development, Policy & Practices, and Business were able to share 5-10 posts about their day and provide insight into the responsibilities of iGEM. Additionally, our team created a Tik Tok account and created videos showing our members working on the project. These snippets focused on educating people about what processes are used in wet lab work, as well as concepts in synthetic biology. Overall, this ongoing social media campaign has been a fun way to keep people engaged in STEM despite the ups and downs of the pandemic.