Tag Archives: outreach

Yolo County “Big Read”

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For any Yolo County folks, this sounds fantastic. I’m pasting in the text of a departmental email I received this morning.

Hello all,

Just an announcement of the details regarding the first annual “Big Read” that EVE/CPB is sponsoring in partnership with the Yolo County Library.  Our first book will be “Here is a Human Being”  by Duke University Assistant Professor Misha Angrist.  This book details many of the personal and public policy issues created by human DNA research such as the possibility of predicting and treating genetic disorders, the commercialization of DNA-based treatments and property/privacy
rights related to personal DNA information.  As part of the
partnership, Pop Bio students will be leading group discussions of the book at branches throughout Yolo County and Dr. Angrist has been invited to give a free public lecture.  His visit is being supported by the EVE seminar series.

We encourage you to read the book, however, more importantly, please spread the word to any non-scientists you know.  We will be advertising at various locations throughout the county, but word of mouth is an excellent way for more community members to hear about this.  If you know of any existing book clubs or community groups that might be interested, please forward this to them.  I have attached the flyer for the event.

We are still in need of volunteers, especially younger students who would be willing to help with the selection and planning for NEXT years book.  (Read:  Excellent Broader Impacts Opportunity!). Please contact any one of us if you are interested.

Thanks,

Angus Chandler
Patrick Fuller
Olivia Rhoades
Sarah Signor

 

I think the more that ivory tower academics and the layperson can speak the same language, the better it will be for both. This seems like a really great way for that to happen, especially focused on something as complicated as genomics. Also, I think it’s great to highlight ethical issues related to these new technologies.

WonderLab

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Gail & robot at Wonderlab

Gail demonstrates the robot at the Wonderlab in Bloomington, Indiana

I’ll start my recap of the Animal Behavior Society/International Ethological Congress at the end of the conference rather than the beginning. The afternoon after the final luncheon, Emilie Snell-Rood from the University of Minnesota organized a fantastic outreach event at WonderLab, a local children’s museum. This event really was a stroke of genius- the idea was to have some of the multitude of animal behavior researchers here for the conference put together a small, hands-on exhibit related to their research. We all got to wear snazzy name-tags like this:

We actually had four Patricelli Lab folks there, besides Gail and I, Conor Taff took off his Common Yellowthroat hat and helped us talk about sage-grouse, and recent undergraduate Becca Koch, who presented a poster at the meeting, also helped answer questions. Not surprisingly, the kids were most enthralled by the fembot (Gail even let them drive!), and our display was one of the more popular ones inside. Some of the parents were pretty curious as well- they had a bit more patience for the high-speed videos we showed on laptops.

The other exhibits were also really fun and some were quite creative, from feeding live spiders, marking butterflies, banding birds, describing dog emotions, and many others. A local (Bloomington) article about the program can be viewed here, and Emilie Snell-Rood also posted on her blog about the event.