My take on “Skype a Scientist”

Scientist.

If the first image that popped into your head was an older man with wild hair, surrounded by bubbling test tubes, and perhaps donning a white lab coat, you’re not the only one — the Einstein-like “mad scientist” is still a prevailing image in popular culture.

But in the real world, scientists are so much more! And they do incredibly cool things on the job, like simulate Mars missions, track birds with sensors or, in my case, study spider venoms. Although most people have been in the hospital, courtroom or classroom, only a very few of them has been in a laboratory where research is actively going on. So, how is anyone supposed to understand how science is done or who is doing it?

To help students understands what science looks like outside of Hollywood, Sarah McAnulty, a Ph.D. candidate in marine biology, went on a mission to introduce kids to the actual working scientist (1). She came up with a program called Skype a Scientist that has already matched scientists to over 800 K-12 classrooms in nearly every U.S. state, and in more than a dozen countries around the world. Teachers can choose what kind of scientists they want to talk to and we, the scientist then leads the session. These sessions can cover the scientist’s area of study, or it can be a general discussion of what it’s like to be a scientist. The goals of the program are to both spark the kids’ interest and make science seem more approachable – to lower the intimidation that so often comes along with science.

This idea really resonated with me so I decided to give it a go. I submitted a short professional profile to the program website and provided information relating to my particular area of scientific expertise, plus the grade or age level I’d preferred to reach out to. The program then matched my expertise and preferences with the teacher’s teaching plans and, after a month – Voila, I’ve been matched with a classroom in Iowa (USA). After we agreed upon a time, I Skyped into the classroom for about 30-45 min, chatting about my work and experience as a scientist. The classroom was more like a before-school club called Women in STEM at Pleasant Valley High School and the kids were super into asking questions about my spider venoms and virtual reality game “Bug Off Pain”, that we’ve done on the idea of my research. But the students’ interest didn’t end there. I feel like they realized that being a scientist wasn’t something that’s in the movies – that we are real people and we can do other things outside of the lab we’re in.

Since I come from a small village in Slovenia, Skype a Scientist was a great vehicle to connect with aspiring female scientists from a small town in Iowa and sort of show them my path into science here at the University of East Anglia in the UK. I hope that by conveying them the powerful value of scientific research and many applications of science and the careers that it can lead to, would inspire our next generation of scientists who will tackle the obstacles of the next century.

REFERENCES

1) Poppick L. (2018, September 20). The squid biologist connecting schools and scientists worldwide. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06772-9