Innovation New Jersey
  • Home
  • Our Coalition
    • Contact Us
  • News
  • Resources
    • State Supports
    • Federal Supports
    • Higher Ed Supports
  • Join Us

Innovation News

Everything Innovation. Everything New Jersey.
Follow us and stay connected.

Rutgers Science Explorer, a Fully Functional Mobil Lab, Celebrates Program’s 10th Anniversary

9/16/2016

0 Comments

 
New Brunswick, NJ — Nick Huber reports in The Daily Targum that the Rutgers Science Explorer (RSE), a modified bus with a fully-functional mobile laboratory inside, is about to celebrate its 10th birthday.
 
The program is taught by graduate students who are pursuing science degrees, said Patricia Irizarry, coordinator for the RSE.  It is designed for middle school students to get engaged with STEM — or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
 
The RSE bus program started in January 2006 and was originally funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
 
Since then the bus has visited more than 125 middle schools within a 50-mile radius of New Brunswick, and taught approximately 42,000 kids.
 
“We were funded by that for the first few years, and then the School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of New Brunswick supported it for an extra five years,” she said. 
​The Edison Venture Fund donated the bus and the bus itself was designed in Ohio by the OBS Company.
 
The bus is currently being sponsored by the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, the School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and the Graduate School of New Brunswick, Irizarry said.
 
The schools are members of the Mobile Lab Coalition, a group of organizations interested in STEM, and once a year they hold a conference.
 
At this year’s conference, the RSE program was awarded the Outstanding Program Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.
 
RSE won the award because of their system of graduate students who serve as role models for middle school students and the relationships they developed with those schools, she said.
 
“Every year we get new schools requesting to be in the program, because they have heard from someone else or they learned from it in the local newspaper, but we also have schools we go to every year,” Irizarry said.  “We build relationships with these schools and we work with them on a yearly basis.”
 
The RSE program is an extension of Rutgers interacting with the community, she said.
 
“For us, it’s important to promote the outreach for science education and also combine all possible disciplines, so if you want to be a scientist in any field you are interested in, they will have to know biology and engineering and need to go to grad school for that,” Irizarry said.
 
The goal is to present the kids with a realistic scenario and provide specific steps they need to follow, she said.
 
The RSE is also connected to the Rutgers Geology Museum as part of their outreach commitment, Irizarry said.
 
The geology museum and the RSE program have been working together for seven years, said Lauren Adamo, a director at the Rutgers Geology Museum.
 
The museum and the RSE program work together to develop new programs at the museum, which will then be used as programs on the bus, Adamo said.
 
Adamo participated in the RSE program for a year during graduate school, she said. She taught activities about volcanoes, DNA and a forensic anthropology activity called Skeleton Detectives.
 
Each day two graduate students will teach a 90 minute program, with each session compromised of 20 kids maximum. The sessions are approved by educational specialists who make sure the activities go hand-in-hand with New Jersey’s Next Generation Standards, Irizarry said.
 
“It could be tiring because it was a whole day of teaching, but it was fun because you’re seeing somewhere around 60 to 80 students a day, and you have them on the bus for about 90 minutes to teach them these hands-on experiments,” Adamo said. “So it was a lot of fun to see them go from not understanding the subject, to completing these activities.”
 
Adamo helped design one of the activities called Drilling Into Science, an activity that teaches how geologists look for and locate oil, she said. The RSE program was great for her professional development and taught her teaching skills.
 
Graduate students in STEM disciplines can apply to be in the RSE program. Students commit a full day to teach middle school kids on the RSE.
 
The RSE expects to continue visiting schools, she said, and are emptying a room on the third floor of the Allison Road Classroom Building on Busch campus, which will eventually turn into an outreach center.
 
This program offers graduate students teaching experience and the opportunity to design activities for the middle school students, Irizarry said, adding, “It’s good for their resume and their professional development.”
 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Do not miss a single innovative moment and sign up for our newsletter!
    Weekly updates


    Categories

    All
    3D Printing
    Academia
    Acquisitions
    Aerospace
    Agriculture
    AIDS
    Algae
    Alumni
    Animals
    Architecture
    Astrophysics
    Autism
    Awards
    Big Data
    Bioethics
    Biofuel
    Biomedical
    BioNJ
    Bioterrorism
    Bit Coins
    Brain Health
    Business
    Camden
    Cancer
    CCollege
    Cellular
    Centenary
    Chemistry
    ChooseNJ
    Climate Change
    Clinical Trials
    Cloud Tech
    Collaboration
    Computing
    Congress
    Coriell
    Council On Innovation
    Crowdfunding
    Cybersecurity
    DARPA
    Defense
    Degree
    Dementia
    Dental Health
    DOC
    DOD
    DOE
    Drew
    Drones
    Drug Creation
    Einstein's Alley
    Electricity
    Energy
    Engineering
    Entrepreneurship
    Environmental
    FAA
    Fairleigh Dickinson
    FDA
    Federal Budget
    Federal Government
    Federal Labs
    Federal Program
    Finance
    Food Science
    Fort Monmouth
    Fuel Cells
    Funding
    Genome
    Geography
    Geology
    Global Competition
    Google
    Governor Christie
    Grant
    Hackensack
    HackensackUMC
    Healthcare
    Health Care
    HHS
    HINJ
    Hospitals
    Immigration
    Incubator
    Infrastructure
    International
    Internet
    Investor
    IoT
    IP
    IT
    Jobs
    Johnson & Johnson
    K-12
    Kean
    Kessler
    Legislation
    Logistics
    Manufacturing
    Medical Devices
    Med School
    Mental Health
    Mentor
    Microorganisms
    Molecular Biology
    Montclair
    NAS
    Neuroscience
    Newark
    New Jersey
    NIFA
    NIH
    NIST
    NJBDA
    NJBIA
    NJ Chemistry Council
    NJCU
    NJDOLWD
    NJEDA
    NJEDge
    NJHF
    NJII
    NJIT
    NJMEP
    NJPAC
    NJPRO
    NJTC
    Nonprofit
    NSF
    OpEd
    Open Data
    OSHE
    OSTP
    Parasite
    Patents
    Paterson
    Patients
    Perth Amboy
    Pharma
    POTUS
    PPPL
    Princeton
    Prosthetics
    Ranking
    Rare Disease
    R&D Council
    Report
    Resiliency
    Rider
    Robotics
    Rowan
    Rutgers
    SBA
    Seton Hall
    Siemens
    Smart Car
    Smart Cities
    Software
    Solar
    Space
    SSTI
    Startup
    State Government
    STEM
    Stevens
    Stockton
    Subatomic
    Supports
    Sustainability
    Taxes
    TCNJ
    Teachers
    Telecom
    Therapy
    Thermodynamics
    Transportation
    Undergraduate
    USEDA
    Verizon
    Video Game
    Virtual Reality
    Water
    WHO
    William Paterson
    Women In STEM
    Workforce Development

Home   Coalition   News   Resources   Events   Join Us
Picture
Innovation New Jersey Coalition
10 West Lafayette Street
Trenton, NJ 08608-2002
609-858-9507