[Plsfaculty] Plant Science Family Nights

[Donna-Rae Marquez]

On Behalf of Dr. Rod Wing:

 

Dear Plant Science Faculty,

I was awarded a NSF Plant Genome grant in September 2010 entitled Oryza
Genome Evolution. NSF Plant Genome grants require an education and outreach
component and we proposed Plant Science Family Nights as described below:

 

3) Outreach to Elementary Students and their Families: For this proposal, we
plan to create a new program entitled "Plant Science Family Night" (PSFN)
that will target approximately 1,600 K-5 students, and their families in
Tucson's District 16. District 16 has hosted several such events in the
areas of physics, math and space/planetary exploration but none in the area
of plant sciences. PSFN would feature 6-8 hands-on "discovery environments"
and short talks to get kids excited about plants and science. In the 2010/11
school year we will distribute the November 2009 Science poster we developed
that describes maize and the genome project. Potential topics include: 1)
What is a genetically modified plant? 2) Do plants have DNA? (Kids could
extract DNA and/or look at chromosomes under a microscope.) 3) Can plants
get sick and how? 4) How were plants domesticated (e.g. corn and rice)? 5)
How can we feed the world's increasing population? 6) Bioenergy - fuel from
corn, soybean or sugarcane vs. cellulose. 7) Organic farming. 8) How much
water does it take to grow a plant? 9) What is biodiversity and why is it
important? 10) Invasive/non-native plants - The buffelgrass problem and how
to solve it. PSFN would also have a plant sale (grown by the kids) to raise
money for science education. PSFN would run twice a year at Ventana Vista
Elementary (VVE) School and be coordinated by a TBA UA coordinator and award
winning VVE Librarian Ms. Caryl Jones (Jones collaboration letter). Each
"discovery environment" will be lead by a UA Plant Science faculty mentor
(Feldman collaboration letter). In year three, we will investigate the
possibility of offering a for-credit summer workshop for teachers through
UA's Outreach College [220] to learn how to establish PSFNs in other school
districts.

                                           

I am writing you to see if any of you would be interested in participating
in our outreach activity. It should be a lot of fun and is a great
opportunity to promote our department and plant science research in Tucson. 

 

The first PSFN is scheduled for March 4th from 5-8pm. Everyone is invited to
attend, and I am hoping that some of you might be interested in
participating by running a booth on a specific topic, or in general
volunteering. If you are interested in participating in this workshop please
let me know and we can discuss various options.

 

Best regards for the new year.

 

Rod

 

PS: We have a decent budget to fund this activity and I am willing to
discuss the option of partial graduate student support (1 month/yr) to
develop and teach various outreach modules for the program.

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