Teaching and Outreach
Envirobites
I am a regular contributor to the Envirobites blog, which summarizes recent environmental research for non scientists. It is part of a family of blogs that aim to make science more accessible to the public. I write articles and help edit the posts of other contributors. The posts I have authored can be found most easily here.
ComSciCon
I attended the ComSciCon national workshop in June 2015. This highly competitive workshop focuses on interacting with graduate student scientists from a variety of fields as well as communication experts to improve our abilities to communicate science. Specific sessions were geared toward improving our ability to speak to reporters, students, and the general public. We discussed the advantages and challenges of several communication media including video, podcasts, writing, and personal contact.
GK-12
From summer 2011 through spring 2012 I was part of the NSF GK-12 program or graduate students teaching kindergarten through 12th grade. I primarily worked with middle school students, visiting their science classes and teaching them about engineering with lessons focused on energy and air quality. I designed curriculum for the classes that was later admitted to the teach engineering website and is freely available.
Teach Engineering is an excellent resource for K-12 science and engineering curriculum. All the lessons are peer reviewed by both engineers and teachers, the lessons are freely available, and the lessons are correlated with teaching standards. I have published curriculum on the site. Links to my lessons can be found on the curriculum vitae tab.
CU Science Discovery
I taught two summer camp sessions in 2014 with Science Discovery. I taught "Muggle Magic" classes, associating science topics with Harry Potter to make them seem more exciting and accessible. Topics include astronomy, genetics and the 'wizarding gene,' chemistry as an analogy to potions, the physics of non-magical flight, and how scientists are using optics to create real world invisibility cloaks.
AirWaterGas Teacher Professional Development
I am part of a team developing a course for Colorado teachers. This course will teach Colorado teachers about energy, air quality, and climate issues. We will discuss how these issues might be particularly relevant to their communities and how they can incorporate these ideas into their classroom through lessons and activities. I will be leading a webinar on energy scenarios modeling.
Expanding Your Horizons
Expanding your horizons is a program that helps introduce middle school girls to science and engineering and introduces them to role models in the sciences. It is a one day program that brings girls to a university setting and introduces them to scientists and engineers and what they do. I volunteered with this program so that these girls can get exposure to what they are capable of and all the cool things they can do with science.