Educational Outreach Volunteer Opportunities
The Materials Research Science & Engineering Center offers a variety of K-12 outreach opportunities during the academic year. We are always looking for more volunteers to help with these programs. In the past, most of our volunteers have been graduate students and postdoctoral associates, but we welcome undergraduates, professors and staff to volunteer as well.
|
|
|
The biggest volunteer program that MRSEC runs is the Chute And Northwestern Science Education (CHANSE) program is a weekly after-school science club at the Evanston Chute Middle School. A group of 10-20 students are led by 3 Northwestern volunteers in fun and educational science experiments. We are looking for volunteers who could lead one or two sessions a month. We have a variety of books to help the leaders formulate a lesson plan and the MRSEC project coordinator can help buy the materials. |
|
The time commitment is about 4 hours per session including the planning. If you are shy and don't want to stand in front of the classroom, you can volunteer to help with the lesson planning and materials preparation work. The coordinator for this program is Shannon Ciston. The sessions will be on Wednesdays at 3pm starting October 10. Chute has a large population of minority students, who are traditionally under-represented in the science and engineering disciplines, and almost half of the students come from low-income families. This is a great way to help our community!
In the fall of 2007, we have started a similar program at Nichols Middle School in Evanston. That after-school science club meets Thursday afternoons. The coordinator for that program is Klara Mueggenburg. |
| |
Several times during the year, school groups come to Northwestern campus to tour our research facilities. MRSEC is looking for volunteers who can show their labs to these visiting students. This is a great way to help out if you only want to make a commitment of a few hours a year.
|
The Center would like to explore the possibility of building an outreach team whose members could go to neighboring schools a couple of times a year. The volunteers may do classroom demonstrations or judge a science fair.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Klara Mueggenburg. |
