OUTREACH EXPERIENCE AND RESOURCES

​​I love sharing my passion for science and nature through educational outreach. I especially enjoy going into classrooms to do hands-on activities or to give presentations about my research to get kids excited about science. I also collaborate with teachers and others to develop resources that anyone can use for an outreach activity. 

Outreach resources I have developed or adapted

Food web Jenga: This hands-on activity helps students explore food web dynamics by playing out different scenarios that involve both natural and human activities that affect a model coastal food web. This activity is best-suited for elementary and middle school students.

• Jenga rule sheet
• Scenario cards

​Pronghorn adaptations: ​This conceptual activity asks students to think about the advantages and disadvantages of some of the physical, behavioral and physiological adaptations that pronghorn have evolved. This activity is best-suited for middle school and high school students.

• Student version
• Teacher version

Mark-recapture activity: This hands-on activity has the students simulate estimating wildlife population sizes using a method called mark-recapture. This activity is best-suited for high school students.

• Student version
• Teacher version

Outreach experience

Outreach stats (2016 - present)
      Elementary school: 15+ hours, reached 250+ students
      Middle school: 12+ hours, reached 130+ students
      High school: 20+ hours, reached 150+ students

I have led educational outreach in elementary, middle school and high school classrooms, and have participated in organized outreach events including Women in STEM Day, STEM Saturday, Wyoming State Science Fair, and Wyoming State Science Olympiad Tournament. I served on the University of Wyoming Program in Ecology Outreach Committee for three years, and I actively participate in outreach events coordinated by the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium's Science Kitchen. 

​For three years, I coordinated connecting University of Wyoming graduate students with kindergarteners in San Diego, CA. The kindergarten students each got to pick an animal that one of the graduate students studied and do a poster presentation about the animal for their classmates. To prepare their presentations, the kindergarten students each asked their "researcher" (AKA their graduate student buddy) questions about the animal and questions about the graduate student's research. The graduate students enjoyed sharing their research through this outreach, and the kindergarten students were incredibly excited to talk to real scientists. See one of the posters created by a kindergarten student about my mule deer research to the left.