Just as undergraduate students complete a week of events celebrating their research efforts, younger budding scientists from grades 1-8 in the Eugene 4J School District will invade the University of Oregon on Saturday. They'll be showing off their experiments and inventions.
The second UO Science and Invention Fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the atrium of Willamette Hall, 1371 E. 13th Ave. The public may attend free of charge and view some 60 entries, which will be judged by a panel of UO scientists and graduate students.
The event is the brainchild of the Science Program to Inspire Creativity and Excellence (SPICE), which is the host. The UO STEM CORE program and the College of Arts and Sciences are the primary sponsors. Top finishers in each category will earn awards and receive feedback from the judges.
The Science and Invention Fair is a follow-up event to SPICE's first fair held in the Willamette Hall atrium on April 18th, 2012, said SPICE Director Brandy Todd, a doctoral student in the UO College of Education. The fair and the Fall Science Open House both attract more than 400 people, who visit a host of activity tables set up by existing campus and community science outreach programs, participate in free science workshops, and "enjoy the wonderful projects and inventions brought by area children," Todd said. "It's a loud, messy, fun event."
In support of the fair, Todd said, UO undergraduate and graduate students majoring in science have given four presentations in 14 classrooms at area schools: Willagillespie, Howard, Coburg Charter School and Edgewood Community elementary schools; and middle school grades at Ridgeline Montessori School and Agnes Stewart Middle School. Willagillespie and Howard are Title 1 schools that get federal assistance for low-income students.
SPICE — formed in 2008 as an educational outreach effort of the Oregon Center for Optics — primarily targets girls, who are underrepresented in the sciences, but its programs, including three concurrent summer camps are open to boys. "Our goal is to bring kids to campus to give them a sense of ownership that communicates to them that they can go to college," Todd said.
- from UO Office of Strategic Communications