[BNC-grads-list] Nanodays Registration - Birck Grad Student participation requested

[Turner, Jaime J]

Dear Birck Grad Students,

Please see below the registration information for this year's Nanodays.  Our Director of Birck, Professor Shakouri is highly recommending participation by Birck's graduate students, so if you are at all able to volunteer please do so.

NanoDays is a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering and its potential impact on the future. Discovery Park's Birck Nanotechnology Center has hosted NanoDays activities at Purdue since 2010, and we are in the planning stages for this year's events, which will take place April 9-12, 2014.

There will be 4 NanoDays events this year:


*         Wednesday 6-8pm, April 9: Girl Scouts in Birck

*         Thursday, 9am - 1pm, April 10: Middle school students in Birck

*         Friday, 9am- 1 pm, April 11: High school students in Birck

*         Saturday 10am - 4pm, April 12: General Public at Spring Fest

Our vision for NanoDays 2014 is to 1) show why nano research is relevant and important to students in grades 4-12, and 2) show the relationships between each research topic and some of the big ideas in nanoscience.

There will be two types of activity team:


1)     Research activity teams - based on Graduate Student Research
A graduate student researcher will work with a few undergraduate students, and as a team they will create an engaging activity to communicate the importance of the research at a level appropriate for our audience, and show connections to the big ideas in nano.


2)     Conceptual activity teams- based on the NanoDays kits
Teams of students will facilitate activities from the NanoDays kits.  These activities have been selected and extensively tested by education professionals.  In addition to teaching important concepts in nanoscience, the concept teams will help students see the connections between the nano concepts and nanotechnology research.

We need your help!  Please volunteer to make this event a success.

We are looking for:

*         Graduate students who do nano-related research

*         Undergraduate and graduate students with some science background who are interested in engaging students with nanoscience concepts.

*         Students who would like to help with other NanoDays tasks, such as giving tours, providing directions and general flow and crowd control.

You do not need to be a science, engineering or technology major to participate, but some scientific background will help.

Volunteers are expected to participate in approximately 4 hours of training before going "live", and are asked to commit to working for at least 2 hours during NanoDays, though attending for the entire event is encouraged.  In return, you get to be part of one of the biggest events for the smallest science, one that will make a difference to hundreds of middle school and high school students.  Developing and facilitating NanoDays activities will also look great on your resume.

Last year, over 800 students visited NanoDays at Birck, so we need a large cadre of volunteers.  If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up by following this link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Hvnfy-tR2h8jE_KHsa0E_YYcmJ8l7uynA75dNC3ONM4/viewform

We hope that you will volunteer to help with NanoDays 2014 at Purdue!


Jaime Turner
Birck Nanotechnology Center
1205 West State Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
Email: jjturner at purdue.edu<mailto:jjturner at purdue.edu>
Phone: 765-494-3509

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