[BNC-all] Nanodays 2014, education activities

[Shakouri, Ali]

Dear All,

We hosted Nanodays last Thursday and Friday, and Girl Scout Night on Wednesday evening. This was a great opportunity to showcase the impact of nanotechnology in the society and to encourage young students to pursue carriers in science and engineering. This would not have been possible without the dedicated work of our staff who have been working with Candiss Vibbert and her office for 4 months planning the nanodays events. Paul Sturm and the Discovery Park Development Intern, Jennifer Hershberger, played a key role by contacting 90 prospect companies and obtaining food and cash contributions from 14 of them.

Jaime Turner did an outstanding job in coordinating and supervising the whole event. I would like to particularly thank the following main contributors:


o   Lisa Reece - Nano Ice Cream, coordinator, training

o   NSAC (Coordinators, Manny Ochoa; Misha Shalaginov) -ran the mock cleanroom

o   Geoff Gardner - created activities for mock cleanroom and participated in mock cleanroom the entire time

o   Heather Anthrop - coordinator, participant, setup and cleanup

o   Nancy Black - coordinator, participant, setup and cleanup

o   Maria Longoria Littleton (MRGN) - coordinator, participant

o   Cindy Ream (MRGN) - participant

o   Cindy Sanders - nanodays accounts, picked up donated food

o   Dave Sederberg - coordinator, Spring fest leader (tent 30 on the Purdue Mall near the class of 1950), training

o   Gale Lockwood -nano treasure hunt

Tanya Faltens  (NCN) lead the preparation of volunteers and training, and prepared teacher info before the event. We also had quite a few staff who helped to set up the activities and clean up:


o   Ron Reger - gave tour for school, helped with set up and clean up

o   Steve Jurss - gave tour for school, helped with cleanup

o   Guy Telesnicki - supervised an activity

o   Donna Brown - supervised an activity and picked up donated food

o   Gilly Anderson - picked up donated food

o   Christy Daugherty - picked up donated food

o   Tracy Hudson - supervised an activity both on Girl Scout evening and during Nanodays

o   Bambrah Miller (MRGN) - participant

o   Joanna Allen - picked up donated food


o   Natosha Whisler - helped move tables for clean up

o   Mary Jo Totten - reserved bus lot and walkie talkies

o   Lorraine Fox - helped move tables for clean up

I was glad to see quite a few graduate students and several faculty who supervised the activities and interacted with our young visitors. This is a great way to fulfill outreach activities for NSF or similar grants.

Together with Peter Bermel and Lisa Reece, we are working to prepare material for Research Goes to School. This is an NSF program lead by Gabriela Weaver and Discovery Learning Research Center. During the next two summers, we will have a two-week training for a group of pre-service and in-service high school teachers from rural Indiana to introduce nanotechnology concepts in their classes. We hope this can be the basis of future nanotechnology K-12 and UG education grants. It will be great if other faculty could also take the lead and include nanodays in their upcoming proposals.

Thanks to Gabriele Appenzeller and Phillip Fiorini, Journal and Courier was invited and they wrote a nice article about nanodays:
http://www.jconline.com/article/20140411/NEWS0501/304110030/At-NanoDays-kids-can-see-field-fits?nclick_check=1

Thanks again for everybody's outstanding work. Please let me or Jaime know if you have suggestions and comments on how we can improve Nanodays or similar events in the future.

Best regards,
Ali



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