Digging Deeper with Planting Science

For the past 3 years or so, I have been an online scientist mentor for the Planting Science program. This is a great way to reach out to students at the middle and high school levels on a weekly (and more often usually) basis and discuss plant biology, experimental design, data analysis, and presenting ideas - especially when somewhat cloistered away from students at a non-teaching institute. The Planting Science program connects scientists with high school and middle school teachers and classrooms, and assigns scientists to groups of 2-4 students during a ~6 week module on a topic in plant biology. Students brainstorm and design experiments with feedback from the scientist mentor and their teacher, and we connect through email messaging and the occasional class skype session. For the past few years I've mentored 2 teams each semester, and had a blast guiding them through their experiment via open questions and answering their queries on "scientist life" as well as basic concepts. 

I am proud to announce that I applied and was selected to be a "Digging Deeper" Fellow with PlantingScience. This fellowships includes traveling to a workshop to collaborate with high school and middle school teachers in Colorado Springs this summer, and work on improving a few of the modules for classrooms, and then being the lead scientist mentor for two classrooms in the fall. My experiences with Planting Science have been great so far, and I think it's an excellent way for teenagers to learn not only about plants, but also that scientists are real (mostly) normal people, and doing science is a job that is not as removed from their lives as they might think based on media depictions. Very excited to head to CO this summer and continue working with this great organization!