Right now! If you read this! Please contact your teacher if you haven't already done so! If contact has been made and visits done, log your activities!!! http://www.letstalkscience.ca/login/ Interested in becoming more active on a national level? We have money to get you to the National conference (taking place at UWO at London, Ontario... free trip home east, anyone?) where the top level coordinators of almost 30 Canadian LTS-PP universities will come together to reflect on the past year, and plan the next one. If you feel like you should be there, tell us why! We have a writing competition lined up. Write, in less than 400 words, why you should go to the conference in London, Ontario, in June 2008. Deadline for submissions is extended to April 5th. ______________________________________________________ UBC Let's Talk Science Partnership Program E-Newsletter Volume 11, Issue 8 April 2008 ______________________________________________________ In this issue: Volunteers Needed - Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair judging + Tour Guide help (April 10th and 11th) - Britannia Homework Club (April – June) - Rural Visits (April/May) - Geneskool training with Genome BC (April/May) - UBC AA (May) Upcoming Events & Opportunities - An Award opportunity with the National Science Foundation (NSF) for all our volunteers! - Vancouver Sun Run (April 20th) - Graduate Diploma in Science Communication - Vancouver School Board: Making Contact mentorship program March Volunteers of the Month Recently completed events - Rural visit - APEGBC E Fest (March 1st ) - Prince of Wales Secondary School Science Week (March 10th – 13th) - MS Infinity Conference - UBC Student Leadership Recognition (March 10th) - Brain Awareness Week (week of March 10th) - Exceptional Escapades in Science (March 12th) - LTS Guest lecturer (March 12th) - HR MacMillan Space Centre Sustainable Spring Break (March 17-21st) - Café Scientifique on Alzheimer - Learning Exchange Programs and Recognition - Classroom visits LTS in the Media - Feature on the UBC Homepage Front page - Canadian Family Magazine - CTV Canada AM - City TV breakfast TV - TVO Knowledge Network - CBC Our office hours Science Joke of the Month ______________________________________________________ === Volunteers Needed === ++ Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair judging + Tour Guide help The Regional level science fair, the BC crème-de-la-crème, is happening: - at the SUB at UBC on April 10, 2008, 6-9pm (sandwiches served at 5) - If you already have a Science degree and is interested, go sign up at http://reg.gvrsf.ca/register_judges.php - EMAIL US after your sign-up so we can keep record (for reason below) To all who have already judged science fairs with us, THANK YOU for your help!!! And don't forget: if you emailed us all your science fair judgings, we will tabulate all your outings and all volunteers who judge three or more fairs get a $20 UBC Bookstore gift card!!! Organizers of the fair are also looking some additional help. On the morning of April 11 (yes, one day after the judging) they are running over 20 tours to different labs on campus, and they are looking for volunteers to assist those tours. All volunteers will receive a personally addressed letter recognizing and thanking them for the 2.5 hours of volunteering they did as campus tour leader. The letters will include background information about the GVRSF and the importance of their volunteer work for the success of the GVRSF. The deadline for this was March 14th but they may still be looking for volunteers so if you are interested, email Clara Westwell-Roper ASAP at clara@gvrsf.ca (and include us in the CC) with your name and year of study. ++ Britannia Homework Club Now that the immensely successful Mentorship program is finished, we are turning our energy toward our next big quest at Britannia Secondary: the Homework Club! We need ~10 volunteers to tutor Grade 8-10 students on their Science homework either during class time or afterschool hours. This is a great way to reach out to inner-city highschool students who are seeking help on their homework before the final exams hit! A training session will happen in April (date and location To Be Announced), email us if you are interested!! ++ Rural visits We've already done a couple of trips and we are planning two final trips in May: one to Kamloops and another to – get this – the Yukon!! As of now we have volunteers who have already expressed interest in participating in these visits, however if you are especially keen on going on these trips and you want to be put on a wait list, please email Lisa McDonnell at lts.rsvp@gmail.com. Also, if you want to be on the rural visit email list to get first notice of trips, please email Lisa with the subject line "rural visit email list". And, if you have an idea of a location that would be great for a trip (e.g.: your home town) for the next school year, please email Lisa with that idea! ++ Geneskool training with Genome BC Genome BC (GBC), a close partner of UBC LTS-PP, is getting more and more requests for their increasingly popular genetics workshop, Geneskool. In light of further synergizing our efforts and (wo)man-power, we are teaming up with Cathy Anderson from GBC to host one or two joint training sessions on how to deliver the Geneskool lesson. The training sessions will take place some time during the last two weeks of April. If you are interested in exciting young-ones about the curious world of genetics, this is for you! Email us and we will keep you posted. ++ UBC Alumni Affairs Wine anyone? The UBC-AA will be hosting an alumni event in May and wants us to run a biology/sustainability themed workshop on Sat, May 24 from 2:00pm – 4:15pm. The workshop will be for the kids of the alumni, while the parents are at an "art of wine tasting" workshop. (okay so I lied: you may not get the wine-tasting portion of the activity, but close enough…?) Email us if you're interested in helping out! ______________________________________________________ === Upcoming Events and Opportunities === ++ An Award opportunity with the National Science Foundation (NSF) for all our volunteers! Got some nifty chemistry graphs, or a cool fine arts project? Always thought staring at SEM micro-images was boring? Check out the National Science Foundation Science Visualization Challenge, and submit your image to win $$$ and eternal fame in the scientific community: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp ++ Vancouver Sun Run (April 20th) We'll have several teams, UBC LTS-PP, NRC IFCI, UBC MMAT, BCCRC with volunteers running. Come by and take some pictures – we meet afterwards in the arena, either in section F or around the orange/banana tables. There will be >55,000 participants at the run, so wear your LTS T-shirts!!! (if you don't have one yet, stop by our office and claim one for your keeps!) ++ Graduate Diploma in Science Communication Laurentian University and Science North are currently recruiting for our 2008 Science Communication Graduate program, their 4th year running! This 10 month graduate program is a great way for science graduates to get additional, marketable skills and knowledge in science communication and provides them with an advantage over other science grads when looking for work. We offer the only program of its kind in North America! See attached PDF poster for more detail or visit www.sciencecommunication.ca for more info. ++ Vancouver School Board: Making Contact mentorship program Interested in being a role model for some of today's bright young minds? The Vancouver School district is running a Making Contact mentorship program. The program is aimed at matching gifted and/or talented elementary school students who have a passion in a certain area with a person who also has a passion and expertise in that same area. The mentorship may be a one time occurrence if you have some special event or field trip type experience to offer or it could be minimum of 10 hours to be completed by the end of June. Interested? Check out the attached Word document for students who are still looking for a mentor, visit www.vsb.bc.ca/makingcontact, or email Teresa Milden at tmilden@vsb.bc.ca. ____________________________________________________ === March Volunteers of the Month === As usual, our VOTMs receive a $20 gift certificate courtesy of the UBC Bookstore. Philip Edgcumbe and Rena Tabata did a ton of work for LTS, and double-handedly organized and executed the massive expansion of Brain Awareness Week. Philip also got in some good media coverage for us (more below). Go get your iPods or Macbook Air. (well, giftcards to help buy one…) ____________________________________________________ === Recently Completed Activities === ++ APEGBC E Fest (March 1st ) We had a blast on a super sunny day, talking our throats raw to hundreds of people during the 12th Annual APEGBC E-Fest in the Vancouver downtown Public Library. Thanks to Vicki, Richard, Andrew, Theresa, Heidrun, Lars, Rena, Yutaka, in partnership with SFU LTS, UBC Faculty of Applied Sciences, Geering up, the Department of Materials Engineering, and the Association of Professional Engineers BC. Check out some pics here: http://ubclts.com/apegbc2008. The next Library event will be in May in partnership with NSERC Pacific, we shall keep you posted! ++ Prince of Wales Secondary School Science Week (March 10th – 13th) We sent 10 speakers to Prince of Wales Secondary and talked about cutting edge UBC research and career choices in front of over-filled classrooms comprising of ecstatic kids and teachers. Thanks to all of you who went (y'all know who you are)! ++ Ms Infinity Conference (March 10th) On March 10th, Erin Kennah went to the MS Infinity Conference was held at St. Margaret's School in Victoria. The conference exposed Grades 6- 12 female students to interesting and exciting careers in science. There were a series of guest speakers in the morning sessions, followed by hands on activities in the afternoon. All in the all, the girls were shown that there are infinite possibilities for them if they wish to continue in science! Great work Erin! ++ UBC Student Leadership Recognition (March 10th) UBC President S. Toope and VP Students organized an awesome jazzy leadership recognition reception. As a token of appreciation all outstanding student leaders received the book "The Bottom Billion", the author of which we had featured during this month's Global Citizenship Seminar Series. Thanks to Rena, Theresa, Nadia, Ali, Alia, Rachel, Heidrun, for coming out with us – we congratulate you on receiving the book award, you truly deserve it. Images of the day are in our ubclts.com gallery. Thanks for a great organization, Janet and Chad! ++ Brain Awareness Week (week of March 10th) During the week of March 10th, Philip Edgcumbe and Rena Tabata led a group of 10+ LTS volunteers into 7 classrooms around Vancouver and enthused students about how the brain really works! In total, they reached around 260 students, and this # will keep going up as visits are still ongoing. Thank you Philip and Rena for organizing this thing from start to finish, and of course thank you to all volunteers who helped out!!! ++ Exceptional Escapades in Science (March 12th) This all-new High School student conference was hosted at the Michael Smith Labs with >100 high school students attending (we had >200 applications within hours of going live). Thanks to Heidrun Spohr, Rena Tabata, and Ali Baghani for taking all those kids through a whole set of different hands-on activities as well as a career development talk. ++ LTS Guest Lecturing Also on Wednesday March 12th, Kelley Hishon presented to a class of in-training elementary school science teachers in ECED 415 at the UBC Faculty of Education. She spoke about the need for enthusiasm and interest on the part of science teachers, and that science for young people is just "playing with purpose"! Topics covered include a review of the scientific method, how to adapt it for a young audience, as well as stories about Alexander Fleming and his "fortunate accident" of discovering penicillin even though he was just trying to see if his nose snot would fight bacteria on an agar plate. Kelley also presented them with some science resources for teachers that present great activity ideas, then fielded questions about specific issues around science in the classroom. (Kelley also brought us an interesting fact: out of about 30 soon to be elementary school teachers only 2 had science degrees, all the other 28 responded that they were petrified about having to teach science…) Awesome work Kelley! Hopefully we will get more requests of this sort, you will hear from us when that happens! ++ HR MacMillan Space Centre Sustainable Spring Break (March 17-21st) Lauren Paul Moccia and Lars Rose demonstrated Hydrogen and Direct Methanol Fuel Cells, Sustainable Energy houses, and a solar cooker during this year's Planetarium Sustainable Spring Break: http://www.hrmacmillanspacecentre.com/sustainable.htm (might be offline by the time you read this, there are screenprints on our site now). We also got some interviews in there – see media section for more. ++ Café Scientifique (March 25th) We had yet another cool session of Dave Ng's Café Scientifique at the Railway Club at Seymour, with Cheryl Wellington as the featured speaker, talking about Alzheimer's disease, and getting a good discussion and networking session going. ++ Learning Exchange Programs Mentorship and smart have wrapped up, we will have the final planning session with the teachers, schools, students, grads, and undergrads on April 1-3, and will notify you separately. We would like to acknowledge the great help of all of you involved… Mentorship: Ricky Lo, Karl (Zhiren) Li, Matthew Robertson, Vivian Wong, Jared Sheridan, Dilan Perera, Marilyn Pham, Katy Chong, Anna Russell, Olivia Dam, Nimmi Dhada, Megan Rogers, Janet Lee, David Tam, Arleigh Lambert, Yu-Chen Lin, Maya Tong, Melvin (Chern Yie) Lau, Kai Men Chieh, Wilson Luong, Irina Gavala, Tal Kaikov, Gerald Li, Ryan Wicks, Brandon Ash, Lindsay Jibb, Andrew Lee, Vicki Cheng, Anne Bjorkma, Crispin Jordan, Stefan Caney. SMaRT: Jung Min (Kay) Kim, Wenran (Nancy) Shangguan, Hai Yen (Elizabeth) Du, Chris Or, Bo (Elizabeth) Sun, Smrita Grewal, Alexander Perkins, Athol Wilson, Kelly Soros, Jim Dodge, Sabine Lague, Fiona Chan, Zoe Baker Lindsay Burnell, Devon Rasmussen Matthew Parsons Hasandeep Kular, Carmen Tam, Hyunkyung (Lisa) Cho, Carissa Samoluk, Jennifer Shank, Kevin Tsai, Anudeep Nirval, Kristina Adams, Lauren Whitehead, Josephine Chow, Alym Moosa, Constance Fung, Mohammad Mehrabi, Boyang (Max) Liu, Alia Dharamsi, Victoria Webber, Jazmine Edwards, Sylvia Kwon, Raymond Macapili, Emily Aitken, Qian Qian (Rachel) Liu, Nelly Amenyogbe, Rachel Lim, Suna Jung, King Mong, Rebecca Tong, Tien Li Hsiao, Caitlin Frame, Lourdes Gunara, Sepehr Shahablou, Aleen Saxton, Mona Lee, Jared Sheridan, Ata Abbaszadeh Khiaban, Chi Won Shin, Raymond Kwok, Nelson Yang, Seetha Bhagavatula, Amy Le, Wan-Yun (Polinna) Tsai, Annamaria Gal, Shiny Sachdeva, Omar Elwan, Lily Liang, Jonathan Wong, Mahgol Hamidi, Jordie Schnarr, Nevkeet Toor, Robyn Swinton, Amanda Kong, Theo Jankowski, Tammy (Yuen Wei) Tai, Denise Chau, Esha Randhawa, Betty Huang, Junoh, Lee, Kim-Long Ta, Lauren Gibson, Jessica Cheng, Kyla Burke-Lazarus, Anna Russell, Melvin (Chern Yie), Lau Jackson Wu, Nadia Pietravalle, Elske Hopcraft, Lars Rose, Sam Lee, Erika Eliasson, Agatha Jassem, Mike Carnate, Tamryn, Vicky Mok, Erin Kennah, Heidrun (Heather) Spohr, Jennifer Whelan, Richard Wong, Nadia Pietravalle, Cody Mann, Minnie Dai, Nader Khattab, Sarvin Ghods-Sharifi, ++ Classroom visits We bow down in awe before you all, we have had so many entries of what you did last month! These are the peeps that piped up and told us about their deeds: Rena Tabata, Brian Breslin, Devon Rasmussen, Zoe Baker, Matt Parsons, Lauren Scott, Lauren Paul Moccia, Heidrun Spohr, Richard Wong, Jazmine Hasan, Vicki Cheng, Alia Dharamsi, Amy Le, Aleen Saxton, Nelly Amenyogbe, Alice Li, Hans Jorgensen, Geoffrey Franco, Bryan Louis, Phil Thomlison, Erika Eliasson, Ali Baghani, Nadia Pietravalle, Rachel Moll, Michael Smadella, Chris Blohmke, David Kent, Haitham Ahmed, Shannon Kolind, Erin Leigh MacMillan, Vicky Mok, Athol Wilson, Carmen Tam, Kristine Adams, Minnie Dai, Kristina Adams, Howard Yan, Kristen Kokotilo, Philip Edgcumbe, Fiona Chan, Derek van Pel, Carissa Samoluk, Megan Kofoed, Victoria Webber, Jill Craven, Nicole Vittoz, Po-Yang Cheng, Calvin Tong, Wendi Guo, Cathy Safadi, Shannon Kolind, Ali Baghani, Alice Wang, and the fantastic 4 ? R U not on? Log your activity on http://www.letstalkscience.ca/login/index.php : ___________________________________________________ === LTS in the Media === ++ U-tube Check out our youtube portal for the latest videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/UBCLTScom These include: A fuel cell demo at TRIUMF, the Western National Coordinator meeting, a fuel cell chemistry show in front of a packed Chan Centre, the results of the Student Leadership Conference and much more. Some of our videos were featured on the 2008 front page of the conference: www.slc.ca , they renewed the webpage end of March, a screenprint can be found here: http://ubclts.com/files/Student%20Leadership%20Conference%20'08%20-%20Activation%20Energy%20_%20Stude...pdf ++ U-BC Our leadership volunteer and former coordinator Erika Eliasson got featured on the UBC front page (www.ubc.ca) in honour of her outstanding contribution to UBC (salmon research). We will have a pdf of that on our media section online. ++ Print Media 1) Canadian Family Magazine: Agatha Jassem got interviewed by the Canadian Family Magazine, once again check out the feature in our media section. 2) Federal Government NRC Zone: Kerri Power had an interview with Lars Rose on Let's Talk Science for the Volunteer Week Feature of the Federal National Research Council Zone. ++ TV / film 1) Lars Rose was interviewed by a team around producer Valerie McTavish on local feed CITY TV talking about sustainable energy technologies and LTS during a cozy session of live breakfast TV on Wednesday, March 19th. We'll youtube it for you later. 2) And, yes the guy (i.e. Lars) was interviewed again by Rena, one of the hosts from CTV on national feed Canada AM with producer Jeffrey Tam on Thursday, March 20th. Check out the images from the shoot in our gallery: www.ubclts.com/gallery/2008 3) Last year, all participants at the Planetarium were interviewed on their take on sustainability. All volunteers chipping in are now featured in a clip at the HR MacMillan Space centre on sustainability, 4) We have Philip Edgcumbe featured on a CBC Section on his action during Brain Awareness Week. Will be aired over the next months. Cool stuff. 5) Preview: A feature of us on TVO Knowledge Network will be coming up, called "Future Cars". We will youtube all features as soon as available. 6) A film team from the Vancouver Public Library got some footage in on our combined GEERing up / UBC&SFU LTS-PP outreach during the National Science and Engineering Week in Downtown Vancouver. As customary, all links and PDF copies of all your features are available to all of us. Check it out: http://ubclts.com/ltsmedia. Did U get an interview in? Or got some contacts with the media, and wanna run a story? Let us know, we'll get things moving. ___________________________________________________ === Office Hours === If you want to drop off receipts, pick up supplies or just chat, visit Mike Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1:00pm to 2:00pm. If you can't make those times, write us an email and we can arrange another place/time. _____________________________________________________ === Science Joke of the Month === A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. Engineer: What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes! Doctor: I don't know but I've never seen such ineptitude! Priest: Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him. Priest: Hi George. Say George, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow aren't they? George: Oh yes. That's a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight hile saving our club house last year. So we let them play here anytime free of charge! (silence) Priest: That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight. Doctor: Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them. Engineer: Why can't these guys play at night? -- Lars Rose, Sam Lee, Agatha Jassem & Mike Carnate Coordinators, UBC Let's Talk Science Partnership Program University of British Columbia 2357B-1874 East Mall (Brock Hall Annex) Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Phone: (604) 822-9166 Fax: (604) 822-5945 Email: LTS (at) ubclts.com Web: http://www.ubclts.com