Cornell STEM group hosts hugely successful online outreach event

For 32 years the Cornell chapter of the national group called Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) has been hosting an on-campus event packed full of hands-on science activities for 7th through 9th grade girls. When the Cornell campus closed in March, the organizers had to change gears very quickly and create the 33rd annual EYH event as a strictly online happening.

Berit Goodge, Ph.D. student in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics (AEP) and conference chair of the event, got busy. “Typically, we bring about 500 middle school girls plus parents and teachers to campus for one day for EYH,” says Goodge. “We have groups from departments all across the University put on some really cool hands-on workshops. It’s always a fun, incredible jam-packed day for them to really engage and be part of a big science community. Obviously, this year we couldn’t do that.”

Some of the EYH presentersGoodge and the 30 other members of EYH had a month to prepare for the April 18 event. They contacted speakers, panelists, and other presenters and in the span of less than four weeks created a live webcast (hosted as a Zoom webinar) that reached more than 500 people around the United States and Canada.

There are other chapters of EYH at other universities and, like at Cornell, most were forced to cancel their in-person events. However, many were not able to pull together a virtual event in its place. “Cornell’s EYH is one of the biggest in the country,” says Goodge. “So when other schools cancelled theirs, they spread our invitation around so we had girls from the Seattle area, Puerto Rico, California, Minnesota, Illinois and many other states. There was a lot of word-of-mouth advertising!”

The day featured speakers who presented live talks about their research, some follow-along demos (with instructions posted beforehand so students could try it at home), four panel discussions with panelists joining from all over the country to field questions about different STEM careers, and prerecorded science videos highlighting an array of STEM topics.

Professor Lois Pollack, who is also the Director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell, gave the keynote talk. Pollack, who had agreed to speak when the event was still scheduled to be on-campus, had no problem switching to the on-line setting. She even managed to include some information about the Corona virus in her talk, as some of her research deals with viruses.

“Despite the circumstances, this whole process was so heartwarming for me,” says Goodge. “It was inspiring to see all of the other EYH chairs and everyone else who helped pull this together—to see how much they believe in this event and how much positivity went into making it happen. At every turn Cornell students, faculty, and staff stepped up and it all came together. I really do not think it could have gone any better!”

Here are some facts to support Goodge’s assertion: Attendees ranged in age from four to 86, with 58% between the ages of nine and fifteen. The event was eight hours long, with participants able to come and go at will. Attendance was consistently over 100 people for most of the day, and many people stayed logged in and active for the entire eight hours. Participants came from 25 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

When asked if that means next year’s event will be held in the virtual world, Goodge laughs and says “I certainly hope not.”

 

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