science communication
Science Y'all is a blog created in 2016 by three grad students, including myself. Officially affiliated with the Jackson School of Geosciences at UT Austin, it's a place where undergrad and grad students can write about their research, educational experiences, or fun geology stuff for a general audience. Before graduating, I was the editor-in-chief for the blog. My past blog posts are also linked here.
getting kids to realize rocks are cool
For the 2016-2017 academic year, I participated in this awesome program called SciRes (short for Scientist-in-Residence). It's an extension of the old NSF GK-12 program, run through UT Austin's Environmental Science Institute. Through this program, I worked alongside Colleen Henegan, an AP Environmental Science teacher at the amazing KIPP Austin Collegiate, to develop fun activities that incorporate research into classroom learning. This partnership led me to develop a lab for high school students which actually makes the rock cycle interesting by turning their basic classroom microscopes into petrographic ones. Together, Colleen and I developed this into a published lesson plan that teachers can use alongside hand sample/thin section kits (called RocKits, available here).
The student in this picture isn't texting... She's instagramming a thin section photo!
I've led multiple tours of the UT Austin JSG Electron Microbeam facility for Explore UT. This is a picture of me showing several visitors what a human hair looks like under very high magnification of the ESEM.
informal museum education
In addition to being enrolled in the UT Museum Studies Portfolio Program, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2016. While I was mostly there to do my own research (I was funded through NSF's GRIP and GRFP programs), I had the opportunity to gain museum experiences related to collections management and outreach. This is a flyer for my turn being the "Scientist" in a reoccurring outreach program in the museum's Q?rius space. I got to show curious museum visitors rocks from the mantle, and how a polarized microscope works!
