BrainSTEM’s overarching goal is to engage underserved students in science, technology, engineering, and math through neuroscience lessons, and to build mentorship relationships with the students over the course of the year. We create and teach weekly lessons at five different K12 schools in Houston, and attempt to convey fundamental scientific concepts and our passion for neuroscience. The lessons are hands-on and experiential, and the topics we cover range from linguistics and psychology to sensory perception and electrical signaling.
How It Works
Nothing in the world is closer to us than our own brain. At the same time, nothing in the world is more mysterious than how this 3-pound organ can give rise to ourselves. At BrainSTEM, we believe that this dichotomy has intrinsic interest to people of all ages, and we are dedicated to developing the instructional tools to properly teach what science has discovered about the brain. By teaching about the brain, we hope that students learn not only the skills that they need to succeed in STEM fields, but also how their own minds works.
During the academic year, BIOS 128 BrainSTEM is a course at Rice University where undergraduates take 1 hour each Friday to learn how to teach some new lesson in neuroscience. The following week, these undergraduates teach that same lesson at one of 5 different associated schools below:
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- KIPP Sunnyside
- BCM Ryan Middle School
- BCM Rusk Middle School
- Blackshear Elementary
- Baker-Ripley Gulfton Elementary School
We reach approximately 150 students each week with a different lesson – these can range from dissecting sheep brains and learning anatomy, to coding neural networks that recognize objects, to doing experiments with diffusion gradients that simulate neurons. We approach neuroscience from every angle in order to best prepare students for STEM fields in the future.
This program is largely run by undergraduates and is part of the official neuroscience major curriculum at Rice University. Our students create and document the lessons, teach it to the other undergraduates, and organize their own transportation. BrainSTEM is a multi-semester course, and each semester students are further trained in pedagogy and project management. By having a long term project with impactful goals (i.e., helping the Houston community), we hope to create graduates with the ability to create and lead their own community outreach organizations in the future.