Virtual Science Festival, Halloween Escape Room, Science-U Update, Young Women in STEM Workshop, Science Podcasts, and Cybersecurity Careers
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Hello, Friends!
We hope you are doing well in this difficult and unique year. In the Office of Science Outreach (OSO), we have restructured our normal fall events into a Virtual Science Festival! The positive response from our Penn State science community was overwhelming, and so much information was contributed. We hope families and educators will use this free STEM resource for a long time! The link to our Virtual Science Festival is included in this newsletter. We also have created and added a virtual Escape Room activity with a fun, Halloween theme. Share it with everyone in your household or classroom for some amusement! In addition, we have included a brief announcement about our Science-U 2021 summer camps that you may want to see. Please contact us at outreach@science.psu.edu with any comments or suggestions for virtual programming in the future.
Our two featured partners in this issue are the Penn State chapter of Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) and the Office of Science Communication. Over the Thanksgiving break, GWIS will be hosting its annual Young Girls in STEM Workshop. The virtual workshop is geared towards girls in grades 5-10, who should register before attending, but all family members are welcome to participate! The Eberly College of Science’s podcast series, Hey! I Got a Question About That! has been produced by the Office of Science Communication for over a year. We hope you enjoy the science-theme topics in your free time! Finally, we are sharing information about the National Cybersecurity Career Awareness week which is slated for November 9-14. More information about cybersecurity will be available in our next newsletter as well.
Thank you for your participation and support! We hope everyone enjoys a happy and safe Halloween and Thanksgiving.
-The OSO Team
Virtual Science Festival Continues!
Our Virtual Science Festival featured a kickoff week of science demonstrations, videos, and live webinars throughout the week. However, due to the vast amount of material contributed to the festival by the Penn State science community, the Virtual Science Festival will remain open indefinitely! This way, students, parents, and teachers can access the information for free at any time! Also, more demonstrations and videos will be added as they become available. We encourage families and community members to utilize these educational STEM resources, using the link below.
Escape the Haunted Lab!
Are you up for a challenge? Use your science and logic skills to escape the haunted science lab! This virtual escape room will put your skills to the test as you conquer robots, scientists, and more. Good luck!
This virtual escape room is modeled after one our office created for our “Intro to Robots and Coding” virtual camp we held over the summer. We hope you enjoy it as much as the campers did!
Science-U 2021 Update
The Office of Science Outreach continues to work remotely. Information regarding Science-U 2021 will be delayed this year compared to previous years, in order to ensure a safe, enjoyable experience for all campers. A full announcement regarding a camp schedule, the possibility of virtual camps, and the registration process (including how to re-register for camps cancelled in 2020) will be available by FEBRUARY 1, 2021. Please watch for additional updates in these newsletters and on our website.
Young Women in STEM Workshop
The Penn State Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) organization is thrilled to hold its second Young Women in STEM (YWS) Workshop. The workshop will take place virtually and asynchronously this year. All workshop instructions and videos will become available online to participants on Wednesday, November 25, 2020. They are hoping that students and guardians will have fun doing the science demos while enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday! Last year, this event brought in over 100 middle and high school girls from Centre County and surrounding areas. The event allows young women in 5th-10th grades to engage in fun, hands-on activities in STEM.
This semester, the theme is To Be a Scientist At Home! The goal is to familiarize young women scientists with experiments across different STEM fields. GWIS would like to encourage girls to explore their interests in an interdisciplinary and collaborative working environment! Check out the flyer for more information, and click the link below to register for the event!
Eberly College of Science Podcasts
Nate Follmer, videographer extraordinaire and science newb, and Sam Sholtis, science writer and former research scientist, discuss burning—and sometimes not so burning—questions on the leading edge of science with researchers in the Penn State Eberly College of Science who are actually doing the work!
Nate and Sam are now into the second season of their casual, yet informational podcasts that ask questions of different Eberly faculty and graduate students. Topics from their first season include research on planets, animal adaptations, genome variation, vaccines and much more! The second season podcasts so far have addressed what it is like to be a gradate student in science and the safety protocols involved when researching dangerous viruses. Each of the podcast episodes are available for viewing or listening. Check them out at the link below!
Cybersecurity Careers
Cybersecurity plays an increasingly important role in our lives, so it is worth noting that National Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week is November 9-14, 2020. A goal of this week-long campaign is to call attention to the need for cybersecurity practitioners and to promote cybersecurity education programs. Click the link below from the National Information Technology Laboratory to participate in events and webinars related to careers in cybersecurity.
Meet our team!
Our Office of Science Outreach staff members are happy to assist you with any questions related to Science Outreach. Bookmark our website at https://science.psu.edu/outreach for more information or email us at outreach@science.psu.edu.
We would love to hear from you!
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