Moldy Bread, Smashing Pumpkins and Science Judges: Celebrating 10 Years of Middle School STEM Mentoring
CRS staff, grad student volunteers, and scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab went back to middle school in the past few months!
“Between our Be a Scientist program and partnering with the Berkeley Lab for Reverse Science Fairs, we’ve interacted with every 7th and 8th grader in Berkeley – more than 1,200 students!,” says Associate Director Tyler Chuck. “It’s been exciting.”
This is the 10th year of the innovative “Be a Scientist” program that connects UC Berkeley grad student mentors with 7th graders. Students enthusiastically design and conduct investigations based on their own interests. They extract DNA from fruit, play Taylor Swift to seedlings, test methods for freezing ice cream, and much more.
Side by side with mentors who the students nearly universally describe as “fun, cool, awesome, nice, helpful, and supportive,” each student immerses themself in self-directed learning and discovery, experiencing academic success.
Students conducting an "Elephant Toothpaste" experiment
“I loved that my experiment was about two things I love, water and sound. I liked how it was my choice what I did and how I did it,” explained one student.
UC Berkeley scientist Arianna shares research about particle experiments with computers with Berkeley 7th graders.
Extending the scientist mentors to 8th grade, CRS and LBNL joined up to expand the Reverse Science Fair concept we piloted in 2022-23. This year we reached every Berkeley 8th grade class - nearly 700 students.
“Turning the old science fair format on its head and having the researchers and STEM professionals be the ones to present their work for evaluation by teams of 8th grade judges is really powerful,” said one teacher, noting the earnest concentration and genuine curiosity their students were demonstrating throughout the presentations.
In a single class period, students met scientists working on robotics, supernova, sound engineering and even learned the science behind home-brewed kombucha.