Sonia Kovalevsky Days (SK Days) are nationally-held outreach events that are commonly organized by local chapters of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) to encourage young women to continue their study of mathematics. The AWM Student Chapter at Worcester Polytechnic Institute hosted virtual renditions of SK Day for middle school girls…

Education and Public outreach is an important part of the activities of universities and research institutions. Moreover, public outreach is becoming an interesting career path, suited for young research scientists with strong communication skills and a broad research background. To address these opportunities and challenges, we decided to set up…

Research suggests that children as young as 6 years old could begin to develop a negative attitude towards the STEM disciplines and this results in disengagement and loss of interest in these areas, particularly for girls. Finding ways to address this apparent lack of interest among young students is critical as reports highlight a lack of…

Introduction: Early informal learning experiences are essential for sparking long-term interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In a prior study, we found more promising parent involvement outcomes when families of young children were provided with STEM family education events along with home STEM activity kits compared to…

BME HealthReach is an educational outreach program where undergraduate BME students participate in an out-of-class design thinking course to create and teach interactive STEM activities to K-12 students, where children with chronic illnesses are the primary clients. We detail research that seeks to answer the following: (1) what impact does this…

We present a programmatic study of physicists' and astronomers' attitudes toward education and public outreach (EPO) using 131 survey responses from members of the Dark Energy Survey. We find a disparity between the types of EPO activities researchers deem valuable and those in which they participate. Most respondents are motivated to engage in…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in healthcare and related science majors at the undergraduate level. This presents an opportunity to introduce health science training in middle school science classes to familiarize students to various healthcare-related fields. The pharmaceutical science-based hands-on activities for middle…

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching how vaccines work in the body, and introduces a community outreach project and activity we piloted with youth. Our Nuestra Ciencia program addresses scientific misconceptions among bilingual elementary school children in engaging and scientifically accurate ways. Utilizing analogies and…

For years engineering educators and researchers have tried to get more students from underrepresented groups interested in engineering as a career field and college major. Many interventions designed for high school students assume that students do not know about engineering careers and just need opportunities to learn about the field. The key may…

The article discusses a year-long outreach activity, "Sparking interest in German." Five University of Utah German students engaged in the AATG/Goethe-Institut-sponsored SPARK program and taught German to local middle schoolers. At the heart of this outreach project were questions such as whether student-run outreach programs could truly…

Diverse backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are vital for innovation and creativity in STEM; and yet, racially minoritized groups, such as African Americans and Hispanics, remain underrepresented in the STEM K-12 and career pipeline. Studies show that exposure and access to STEM experiences…

There has been considerable investment in pre-college educational interventions for all areas of STEM (including computer science). The goal of many of these initiatives is to engage and interest students early in their educational career. In this study, a systematic literature review was undertaken to determine the demographic and program data…

This study explored practices that Canadian soil scientists use to educate postsecondary students, K-12 students, and the general public. The most commonly used type of educational activities described by survey respondents, regardless of the settings and the type of target audience, were field-based hands-on activities. The other two commonly…

The Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences at the University of the West of England, Bristol has been piloting a schools outreach project entitled BoxED (EDucation in a Box) since 2015. School activities are inspired from the research and teaching of our academics, and the BoxED team have developed a series of hour long activities, linked to the…

In the present day, it is not uncommon for there to be a class full of engineering students with very few women among them. To combat this lack of gender diversity, colleges and universities have employed outreach programs and developed summer engagement opportunities that allow women to explore engineering before they graduate high school. The…