Education and Outreach

Outreach Activities at Birch Aquarium

Our outreach efforts focus directly on the integration of research, outreach, and education through a comprehensive plan centered scientifically on studying air-sea exchange and the underlying scientific processes that drive observable changes to the environment. The education plan is designed to instill curiosity for science and the environment, while teaching both fundamental scientific skills and hypothesis-driven experimental design. This project involves coupling with the Birch Aquarium, the educational outreach center of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and their Summer Learning Adventure Camp (SLA) programs to: 1) Develop a hands-on experiment, for students in 7-9th grade, to investigate the uptake of CO2 by the ocean and its impact on ocean acidity. Lessons discuss fundamental scientific concepts (e.g., solubility, acid-base chemistry), while investigating how the atmosphere and oceans are linked. Further, the experiments are designed with the intent of teaching students the scientific process in which hypotheses are designed and tested. 2) Connect graduate students, who have designed miniature CO2 sensors as part of an existing analytical chemistry graduate class, with 7-9th grade students who will then use these sensors in their hands-on experiment. 3) Engage 7-9th grade students as they discover active research alongside graduate student guides and participate in hands-on experiments. The project also focuses on adult learning during the SIO Pier Walk series.

NASA Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) 

For the past two years (summer 2013 and 2014) our group has participated in the NASA Student Airborne Research Program.  In 2014, Tim served as one of four faculty mentors for the program, while Steve Schill served as one of the graduate student mentors.  Briefly, SARP is an eight week summer program that brings 32 talented undergraduate students to the high desert of Palmdale, CA to participate in aircraft research aboard the NASA DC-8 and subsequent data analysis at UC Irvine. Look for Bertram SARP Group Presentations at AGU. Applications for SARP 2015 are due 5 February 2015, details can be found here.