STEM Outreach – REU Student Mentors at the LES Girls Club

Turning the Tables on Mentoring

• Summer REU students (Y2014) mentor more than 200 middle school summer camp girls in eight sessions over four weeks at the Lower East Side Girls Club, learning through teaching. Now an annual event.
• Inquiry-based learning while exploring fundamentals behind phase transformations, using the science of nail polish (paint) drying. MRSEC-REU students guided the campers with inquisitive questions about the observed phenomena under high-end microscopes while teaching techniques of microscopy to capture images of paint drying.
• Y2015 REU participants also attended the Biobase Science Happy Hour (June 23) with Professor Sarah Richardson (Harvard), a historian and philosopher of science who studies race and gender in the life sciences and the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. 

REU students Marjorie Lopez (UPR) and Jasmin Jeffrey (Hampton) 

REU students Kelsey Collins (OSU) and Kevin Hung (Cornell)