Doing outreach with local schools through STEM Ambassadors

I have always been passionate about increasing diversity in science, in particular towards those from socioeconomic areas that are currently underrepresented. Whilst there are a number of outreach schemes, STEM Ambassadors in my opinion offers a great framework that works flexibly around the volunteer.

Quoting their website, STEM Ambassadors ‘represents over 28,000 individuals who offer their time, passion, and energy to visit schools, colleges, higher education institutions, and youth group organisations to deliver requests from teachers and youth group leaders who want to link STEM subjects to the real world of work’. Now, this isn’t just limited to students, as anyone can get involved. As part of the scheme, volunteers create their own plan, a presentation, interactive workshop or whatever takes your fancy, which you then advertise on their website. Subsequently, representatives from local schools can contact you expressing their interest and it is up to for you both to work out a time and date that works best. This process works really well, and allows for you (the volunteer) to decide which offers to accept and reject, based on your own preferences.

So far I have done two presentations, to Year 9 students at Heartlands Academy in Nechells, and to sixth-form students at Central St. Michaels Sixth Form in West Bromwich. My approach in providing an interactive presentation with videos and games has proven very popular and I have had a lot of fun doing so and have enjoyed talking with the students and teachers alike.

My presentation which you can find on my GitHub here covers:

• Selective attention (demonstrated through Simon and Chabris’ famous inattention experiment featuring a Gorilla)
• How human brains differ from other primates (featuring a fun working memory task that chimps are extremely good at!)
• The search for meaning (through the Heider-Simmel animation)
• Different approaches in neuroimaging (micro vs macro)
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (how does it work and what we can do with it)

The chimp memory game and selective attention video in particular seem to go down really well with students.

I would certainly recommend STEM Ambassadors for those interested in outreach to local schools!