Working at the Tech was a highlight of my time as a postdoc.

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During my postdoc, I wanted to develop skills beyond those directly related to research. Stanford at the Tech provided me an excellent opportunity to hone my abilities in science education and communication. I think these skills are of the utmost importance but seriously underappreciated by scientists today, and I'm thankful that this program exists to emphasize their value. Helping to get kids interested in science was a real treat. I highly recommend Stanford at the Tech to any biology student interested in interacting with the public.

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Exposing scientists to the public can be just as important as exposing the public to scientists!

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Working at the Tech Museum has not only been tons of fun, but has also been a hugely educational experience for me. While I’ve loved science communication for a long time, those skills aren’t something normally taught or reinforced in graduate school. Stanford at the Tech, however, gave me an opportunity to directly interact with the public while talking about genetics. This allowed me to get immediate feedback on how the communication was going. Blank faces from the visitors? Time to try a new metaphor! Smiling kids loading electrophoresis gels? A success! Being able to get direct feedback helped me to figure out how to tailor my communication to broad audiences while keeping them engaged. It also helped me to develop my science writing skills, something I have not focused on in the past. My time at the Tech has been rewarding, educational, and lots of fun!

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Stanford at The Tech is a unique and rewarding experience!

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Our work as scientists is often times insular and slow-paced. We make a great effort to turn new knowledge into concepts that seem second nature. If we fail to communicate these concepts effectively to the public, we take our knowledge for granted, and the significance of our work is imperiled. This is why I believe the program at the Tech is an excellent way for young researchers to improve their skills at communicating their work. For the price of a few hours each week, you can feel the satisfaction of sharing your own passion for science with a young audience whose excitement will likely surpass that of anyone you encounter at a research talk or poster session.

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Volunteering at the Tech was a fun and unique way to spend a weekday morning!

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Mornings at the Tech were a nice way to break away from campus and get kids and visitors excited about science. Science is a community that seemingly speaks in a different language. As a genetic counselor a crux of our jobs is to help translate this science to the public so people can use this information in their healthcare. Volunteering at the Tech was a great extension of these skills, put to good use through fun activities. I especially enjoyed when visitors responded with excitement or amazement; it was so satisfying when the kids were engaged and interested by the hands-on science.

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Stanford at the Tech is something everyone should participate in.

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Given that research is funded by the public, it’s important for scientists give back. The Tech is an excellent opportunity to share what science is about. Volunteering at the Tech was a lot of fun for me and my audiences. I shared all sorts of cool topics in biology with people of various ages and backgrounds, and we would both leave the museum with great new ideas. Engaging with the public made my own work in lab feel more meaningful as well. I would gladly volunteer again.

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I decided to volunteer at the Tech Museum during a slow patch in my grad school career and the experience completely renewed my passion for science.

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I decided to volunteer at the Tech Museum during a slow patch in my grad school career and the experience completely renewed my passion for science. Dedicating part of my week to sharing my scientific knowledge and interests was incredibly rewarding. It helped me see that there’s so much I can give back to the community as a scientist, and also so much that is yet to be discovered. I’d never been very good with children so I was initially a bit scared! But Barry is great at providing feedback and encouragement, and I definitely gained more confidence and compassion than I ever expected to have. But I’d say that contributing to the “Ask a Geneticist” column was my favorite part of the gig. I’ve always loved writing, ever since I was very little, but I’d gotten more nervous about expressing myself as I got older. With the experience I’ve gained in communicating science to the public, and just getting my ideas out there, I’ve jump-started a lot of the writing projects I’d had on hold, and feel more confident about making science writing a major part of my life.

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Doing science is hard. Talking about it is even harder!

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To be a stellar scientist, you need to be able to do both of these things well. Stanford at the Tech was such an incredible program that helped me get better at talking to the public about science while having a ton of fun. I got to do awesome hands-on experiments with kids and teach them about how cool biology and genetics can be!

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Teaching for Stanford at the Tech has been one of the most rewarding, fun, and unique experiences I’ve had while at Stanford.

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The combination of working at the museum and answering the public’s questions in writing improved my communication skills. These improved skills will be useful in the future anytime I find myself explaining scientific concepts to a non-scientist. During the program I was rejuvenated each week by the kids’ excitement for learning about genetics, and was reminded of why I do science. I encourage anyone with a passion for science to share it by joining this great program.

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Whether you're a rocket scientist or biotech guru you need to be able to communicate effectively.  

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Stanford at the Tech gives you the tools you need to do so.

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Stanford at the Tech was an amazing and very rewarding experience.

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I had no idea how much fun I would have teaching kids about science. I loved watching the kids get excited about different genetic concepts and appreciated their genuine enthusiasm for learning. Through this program I learned a lot about my own communication strengths and weaknesses as well as how to convey complex topics in simpler terms. This program offers you the opportunity to work with kids doing science experiments but also the opportunity to answer genetic questions to the general public. I am so glad to have had the opportunity to participate in this program and would highly recommend this program to any graduate student who is interesting in learning more about how to teach science to the general public.

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Volunteering at The Tech Museum gives you the opportunity to inspire kids and hopefully light a spark in them that could lead them to become future scientists through fun and interactive activities.

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Having no experience talking science to children, I entered the program with some reservations. I quickly found myself enjoying the activities and talking to kids about science. The structure and atmosphere of the volunteer program provided me with the necessary tools and confidence to show kids the fun side of science through simple and fun activities. The most rewarding aspect of this program was having kids telling me they enjoyed and learned many things that they would use in their classroom. I would recommend this program to any bioscience student; it’s an extremely rewarding experience.

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Stanford at The Tech is a one-of-a-kind experience that forces you to ask yourself the question: “do I really know what I’m talking about?!”.

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Communication is key to telling the public why what we do is so important. As a future genetic counselor, I understand this concept and practice it daily. But teaching kids about genetics is a totally different ball game. Running activities at The Tech constantly challenges you to reframe your questions and personalize the information to each kid. I had a blast listening to their responses to my questions, witnessing them using a microscope or pipette for the first time and hearing them scream things like “I want to be a scientist now!!!” Teaching science in a way where kids don’t even realize they’re learning something was the most rewarding experience. I would recommend this program to all graduate students, and especially to those who are in the middle of their projects asking themselves the inevitable question, “what am I even doing?!” If you can explain it to a 6-year-old, you can explain it to your PI.

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At the museum I learned that talking to non-scientists about science is difficult but incredibly rewarding.

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Kids really engaged with the exhibits, and multiple times left talking about how cool it would be to be a scientist. It was a great weekly reminder that the day-to-day work we do, while tedious at times, is ultimately interesting and really fun. Not only was it interesting for the participants, but the questions I got from kids and parents were unique and often made me think about scientific topics in a new way. The communications skills I learned at the Tech will not only be useful for communicating with general audiences, but also for communicating with other scientists. It was a great experience and I can’t think of a more fun way to gain writing and speaking skills.

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Working at the Tech Museum was one of the most enjoyable parts of my graduate school education.

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Science is one of the most challenging things to convey to an audience and I learned a lot about communicating complex scientific concepts to a general audience (of 6 year olds, no less!). It was an amazing, unique, and fun learning experience that I won't soon forget.

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Seeing the public light up about science is rejuvenating.

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Meeting kids and adults at the Tech Museum and talking to them about their own genes and DNA reminded me just how cool it is that I'm a scientist. I learned how to communicate simple and complicated biological processes, which really showed the public how amazing Biology and Genetics are. I've learned that if I communicate the processes correctly, anyone would get excited about DNA and genetics. As a graduate student that rarely gets out of lab, getting that perspective was really refreshing. After a day at the tech, I had new motivation for my research, because I would go back to lab energized and ready to tackle the next question.

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Being a part of Stanford at the Tech was one of the most valuable and enjoyable experiences of my graduate student career.

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Each week, I was able do fun science activities with kids and see them get genuinely excited! I loved seeing the light bulb go off in their head when an idea clicked for them. The kids constantly surprised me with how engaged and smart they were. The experience was also a great reminder of the value of strong communication skills in the field of science. It’s easy to get caught up in academic research and complicated scientific presentations. But what’s the point of all that research if no one else in the public can understand it? Throughout my time at the Tech, I also learned about my own communication style, which I plan to translate into my career as a genetic counselor.

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Science communication is an extremely important skill for every scientist.

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Having the chance to teach and talk about science to kids was an amazing experience to help me improve my science communication skills. From the very beginning I thought that this program would have been a great opportunity to learn how to talk to the public, and possibly sparkle some interest in science both amongst kids and adults. I strongly believe that communicating science to the public can make a big difference in the way this field is view. Seeing both kids and adults become very excited when taught about science has been extremely rewarding, and reminded me about all the cool things that scientists do on a daily basis.

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Stanford at the Tech was challenging in the best possible way and more rewarding than I had imagined!

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I do science every day, so I was pretty sure I’d be a natural at explaining genetics to museum visitors. But it turns out, I had a lot to learn! Volunteering at the Tech Museum challenged me to examine so many aspects of how I communicate science, in a way I had never done before in grad school. At the museum, I quickly realized how uniquely challenging it is to explain science to non-experts in a way that is clear and accessible but not overly simplistic. In the beginning, I jumbled my words, explained concepts out of order, and used too many tricky “science words.” Needless to say, science communication did not come as naturally to me as I had thought! But with practice, I learned to ask encouraging questions, use easy-to-understand language, and explain ideas through analogies to get visitors excited about biology and genetics. I learned to gauge my audience and change tack when they didn’t understand. The look on the faces of kids (and adults!) when they grasped a concept was immensely rewarding, and my favorite part of the day was always when guests lingered to ask me more questions even after the activity ended. When I started at Stanford, I thought that all of my education would happen in the lab and the classroom. But my time at the Tech has turned out to be one of the most enriching experiences in my grad school career.

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Explaining science to kids is hard but incredibly rewarding. 

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Participating in Stanford at the Tech took me outside of the bubble of grad school and lab work.  It reminded me of why I started to pursue science.  It was rewarding to see a kid light up when he understood what PTC allele he had inherited from his mom. She stood there and grimaced at the taste, and he couldn’t taste a thing.   A kid asking whether he could run another gel reminded me how cool a gel looked the first time I ran one.  Communicating science to the public is hard and not a skill taught in grad school but one that is important for reminding me of why we do science. 

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My experience at the Tech Museum was very rewarding.

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I got to talk about genetics and do science experiments with both kids and adults from a broad background. It helped me realize how important it is to tailor my explanations to each visitor to be both educational and interesting. The skills I learned at the museum were broadly applicable, and have helped me communicate better on non-science topics as well.

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