Page 17 - CEMS News Winter 2021

STUDENT NEWS
Student organizations continued from page 16
Lab safety walk-throughs, typically conducted in groups of three or four lab safety officers (LSOs) from different labs, were held independently and voluntarily instead. Taking advantage of the situation, the Analysis and Compliance Committee was able to create new hazard-specific safety walk-through rubrics. We look forward to modifying and editing these rubrics based on feedback from our LSOs.
Additionally, the Public Relations Committee has continued to run our JST Twitter account (@UMNJST)
and provide #SafetyMomentMondays. That committee is currently working on a virtual newsletter to ensure that all researchers have access to the same high-quality safety tips, as always.
This fall semester, we kicked off our first-ever open forum events for LSOs to get feedback from other LSOs and volunteer JST members on things they’d like to
see improved or changed in the future. We have also established a brand-new committee, which will focus on safety networking with industrial partners and outreach. We plan to establish safer protocols for chemistry demos for outreach purposes or for primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) to help them establish their own safety teams.”
Joint Safety Team: www.jst.umn.edu Twitter: @UMNJST
Science for All (SFA):
Annie Brinda, BME, Co-President; Nolan Concannon, CEMS, Co-President
Science for All was established in 2014, with a mission to support and promote STEM fields in the urban Twin- Cities community by visiting local schools and providing students an opportunity to perform intricate science experiments in order to foster “scientific method”-based thought process.
“With the transition to virtual learning for Twin-Cities middle schools, the value of engaging, interactive
experiments in early science education is greater than ever. The University of Minnesota’s Science for All (SFA) has followed teachers and students online to demonstrate scientific concepts and mentor students through intricate science experiments and demonstrations. SFA is an outreach program run by students from across UMN’s College of Science and Engineering, including CEMS.
Starting in Fall 2020, we began working with our graduate student volunteers and teachers to transition to virtual visits, while still delivering engaging experiments. We worked with classrooms from three local schools: Marcy Open School and KIPP North Star in Minneapolis, and Murray Middle School in Saint Paul, to conduct ten virtual visits between November and December. This year’s visits have included expert-led tours of UMN research facilities, inspiring personal accounts of our journeys to become scientists, and a hands-on demonstration of the physics behind lava lamps. For the lava lamps, we worked with teachers to provide students with supply kits so that they could conduct the experiment from home, under guidance from UMN graduate students using Google Meets. The students used vegetable oil, Alka-Seltzer tablets, food dye, and water to visualize the concepts of chemical reactions and miscibility through guided demonstrations.
Planning is already underway to deliver even more virtual visits in spring semester. We look forward to continuing to engage and inspire students to pursue the study of science, while providing a unique opportunity to experience hands-on experimentation with young scientists carrying out cutting-edge research.
Additionally, we are grateful to all our partner teachers and funders, including CEMS, for helping us to adapt our program to work online and reach students in a time when hands-on experimentation can seem so remote.”
Science for All: https://sfa.cems.umn.edu/ Twitter: @SCI4ALL_UMN
CEMSnews Winter 2021 17