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The �������� Alumni ROCS (Regional Outreach and Communications in STEM) is a competitive program that provides funding for alumni of Advanced Research Training courses to create and deploy an outreach project that brings their �������� experience back to their community.

On July 12, three of the four inaugural Alumni ROCS awardees presented their projects to the �������� community in a talk titled: "Spreading the �������� Spirit and Engaging and Impacting Communities through STEM Nationwide."

From California to Connecticut, the alumni sought to share their favorite parts of their �������� experience with students in their local communities. 

To inspire students in the Pasadena School District in California, Microbial Diversity alumnus Elliot Mueller, Caltech, partnered with , a student driven outreach organization that works collaboratively with K-12 school districts. 

He collaborated on a month-long educational program on environmental microbiology that included bringing students into the field to collect soil and water samples, create Winogradsky columns, and examine their specimens under a field microscope.

Mueller says he chose environmental microbiology as the focus of the program because it’s something that doesn’t typically show up in standard curriculum. “It falls between the cracks, yet it is so important to food webs and climate change. By showing students the microbial life around them, we hoped to open their eyes to a whole new world of scientific exploration which they could even turn into a career.”

“We used the �������� ROCS funding to purchase enough equipment to run this program 5-10 more times in the coming years. With the success of our pilot exercise using the �������� funding, we hope to secure even more funding to support transportation costs for high schools that are farther from nature,” says Mueller. 

On the other side of the country, Physiology alumnus Brady Goulden, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine provided hands-on science experiences to underserved students at William Paca Elementary School in Baltimore, MD.

“Instilling confidence and passion in STEM fields for disadvantaged youths is important for many reasons, but it’s especially important to me,” says Goulden. “I know how difficult even the slightest amount of adversity can be. These students in Baltimore City go through so much, and I wanted to give back to them in a way that I was fortunate enough to receive.”

Goulden partnered with John’s Hopkins outreach group Students in Action (SIA) to coordinate 30 – 40 volunteers in 5 classrooms (150 students) in title 1 Baltimore Public Schools. The goal: to inspire youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue higher education in STEM, or at the minimum, create interest and creativity in solving complex problems with science!

“It makes a difference [to these kids] to see other people be excited about science,” Goulden said during his July 12 presentation.

Goulden said his favorite part of the project was seeing the student’s excitement when they arrived in the classroom for lessons. "You could tell they were eager to do more experiments and get answers to all their science related questions.”

The John’s Hopkins SIA group is currently doing lessons at one nearby title one school, but hope to branch out to more schools in Baltimore City. They have already expanded their lesson plans thanks to the funding from the Alumni ROCS grant. 

“We started this and funded it out of our pockets, so it makes a huge difference when you have �������� funding to do these experiments.”

In New Haven, CT, Embryology aluma Alice Sherrard, Yale University, helped local students visualize embryos by creating their own custom-built microscopes.