Team:SoundBio/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Our team placed an emphasis on sponsoring educational outreach, especially by teaching principles of STEM and biology to local children and our community. Our main initiative, dubbed Minterlab, and its curriculum has been used both by our own team and by other iGEM teams around the world. We sought to not only inform the general public about our project and the significance of synthetic biology, but we also engaged with our community to better inform our own project in turn.
Education
Minterlab
This year, our team developed a curriculum for a summer camp for children aiming to educate them about the basics of synthetic biology. It comprised of lessons and hands-on activities teaching biology fundamentals, and aimed to give students a chance to learn more about the field. Our curriculum was successfully implemented by our team, as well as several other teams based around the world. Overall, our outreach was successful and gave children a fun and satisfying experience.
SoundBio Minterlab 2019
AFCM Minterlab 2019
Participant Forms and Waivers
These are the legal forms we asked Seattle Minterlab participants to complete. These forms ensured the necessary safety precautions of working with young children:
Minterlab 2019 Medical Release Form
Minterlab 2019 Photo Release Waiver
Minterlab 2019 Registration/Liability Form
SAFE
credit: @helenawangphotography
In August 2019, SoundBio iGEM collaborated with the Seattle Advocates for Education (SAFE) organization to teach middle school students basic principles of biology and synthetic biology. The summer camp, themed “STEM & Space Exploration,” provided an opportunity for students to get a head start in high school courses and conduct application-based experiments. Besides our primary activity, which was a strawberry DNA extraction experiment, SoundBio iGEM also presented basic lectures, guided students through worksheets, and introduced the iGEM competition itself.
Check out our curriculum!
SPIN
During the summer of 2019, SoundBio iGEM partnered with King County’s SPIN Girls (STEM Paths Innovation Network) to educate middle school students about biological sciences. Including a full lecture on concepts such as the central dogma and cell engineering, this form of community outreach encouraged the careers of especially underrepresented females in STEM. In this event, our team also offered a strawberry DNA extraction lab and an introduction to iGEM.
Engagement
We held a fundraising campaign on the Experiment.com crowdsourcing website co-founded by Cindy Wu, a Washington iGEM alum!
We were able to raise 107% of our fundraising goals thanks to our kind donors.
Most importantly, we made sure to introduce to the general public what our project was and how we tied in synthetic biology to it. Throughout our work, we regularly updated and engaged with our donors on our Experiment campaign page on our progress through “Captain’s Logs”.
Click here to see our Experiment.com campaign!
We were able to raise 107% of our fundraising goals thanks to our kind donors.
Most importantly, we made sure to introduce to the general public what our project was and how we tied in synthetic biology to it. Throughout our work, we regularly updated and engaged with our donors on our Experiment campaign page on our progress through “Captain’s Logs”.
Click here to see our Experiment.com campaign!