Team:WLC-Milwaukee/Public Engagement
Outreach
WLC-Milwaukee’s Outreach and Public Engagement work has taken place over the course of this past year and is a major focus of our team’s efforts. We have continued to develop relationships with local high schools, community members, and educational programs to facilitate the dissemination of misinformation regarding bioengineering and genetic modification. As a team we believe that engaging the community doesn’t simply mean ‘talking at them’ but talking to them and understanding how we as scientists can better communicate and inspire faith in scientific research in our increasingly disparate world.
Young Women in Science Program
The WLC-iGEM Team was able to continue our long running relationship with the Young Women in Science Program (YWSP) at Wisconsin Lutheran College to provide young high school aged women with lab experiences and study tips to help prepare them for a future in STEM! In March we worked with 13 young women interested in studying STEM in college to introduce them to bioengineering tools such as the basics of Cloning and Gel Electrophoresis. This was a great way for our team to engage with bright young women and expose them to tools of science they will likely utilize in college and discuss with these students the importance of bioengineering in our world.
Milwaukee Undergraduate Biological Research Conference
For the second year, WLC-Milwaukee presented a poster at the Milwaukee Undergraduate Biology Research Conference in April and presented our improvements to our previous work with water testing for E. coli. Our goal in participating in this event was to receive feedback from researchers and other undergraduate students on ways we could optimize our system and reduce our waste (which has been an area of investigation with our project). Additionally, we were encouraged to test a wider variety of chromogenic substrates with our system so it could be even further optimized for a variety of applications.
Organization Outreach Day
In August, WLC-Milwaukee’s team leaders participated in Wisconsin Lutheran College’s club/organization outreach day. Our team, along with all of the other clubs on campus, spent the afternoon welcoming the freshmen and encouraging them to get involved on campus. At our table, we talked to students about iGEM, bioengineering, and our project for this year.
Science Exploration Day
In late September, our team hosted an event on campus for grade school students called Science Exploration Day. Eighteen students were shown 30-minute demonstrations and participated in interactive experiments led by our professors in biology, physics, chemistry, and anatomy and physiology. These fun demos allowed them to look through microscopes and identify various bacteria, learn about and visualize electricity with a Van de Graaff generator, learn how temperature affects rates of chemical reaction using glowsticks, superconductors, and liquid nitrogen, and explore their lung capacities. This was a great opportunity to inspire an interest in science in children at a young age and expose them to various areas of STEM.
Bacteriophages and Bioengineering for High Schoolers
One of the most exciting and encouraging events we were able to facilitate was going to Shoreland Lutheran Highschool and running a bacteriophage screening lab in their classrooms with a number of students in the biomedical STEM program at Shoreland. This awesome experience provided experience and information to these high school students on the uses of bacteriophages in science and how bioengineering is used to make the world a better place. Additionally, this event took our previous educational efforts with Shoreland students one step further. One of our current team members originally attended Shoreland and last year toured our campus, participating in the WLC-iGEM Bioengineering presentation session and lab event and helped make this event a reality. Being able to continue working with Shoreland students and seeing their passion and drive to pursue careers in research only inspires our team to attempt to better support and prepare these bright young scientists for futures in STEM.
GMOvie Night
As we approached the Wiki Freeze, our team hosted one final Outreach event on our campus that was a bit more “fun” and relaxed than our normal Outreach programs, where we hosted a movie night and discussion about Genetically Modified Organisms. We watched Jurassic Park (because who doesn’t enjoy a good genetically modified dinosaur) and talked about how genetic engineering and synthetic biology are actually used in the real world answering questions about GMO safety and regulation.
Water Safety and Testing Education
One of the ways we sought to spread information regarding both our project, the importance of water safety, and water testing options currently available to the public was through continuing the analysis begun by the 2017 WLC-iGEM Team. The results of the 2017 WlC-iGEM Survey regarding water quality and water testing options were incorporated and used to improve a basic water informational pamphlet and create a series of educational materials more tailored for our community.
Social Media
The final facet of our Community engagement and outreach was through the use of our Social Media (specifically Facebook, although we have finally created a team Instagram Page with the help of some of our newer team members) to communicate about our outreach events and other events in our team’s progression! In the past month alone (October 2018), our content regarding various events and programs has reached nearly 3,000 people and over 7,000 people since July. We feel as though, while our Social Media presence may not be nearly as strong as that of other iGEM teams, it has been incredibly effective in communicating to the public regarding our outreach efforts.
