Outreach
If anyone wants to coordinate an outreach event with the AOS department, please email me .
Science is essentially meaningless unless it is communicated to non-experts. Communication of scientific principles, methods, and interpretations can help to illuminate the inherent beauty in nature or give non-scientists an objective basis and rationalized line of thought to formulate opinions on the values and priorities of society.
I am currently in charge of the educational outreach programming for the UCLA Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department (AOS) Graduate Student Organization and am always looking to create new outreach programming for the department to participate in.
You can look into the types of outreach programming UCLA AOS is involved in below:
Lessons/Activities
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Weather tours for K-12 teachers and classes - the tours are offered
by the AOS Staff Meteorologist, James Murakami.
Follow the link to learn more about the tours and contact James to set up a tour.
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Childern's Water Education Festival - this is a great event that I have had the pleasure
of participating in every year while at UCLA. Each year, graduate students from UCLA AOS give a 20 min. interactive lesson
to elementary and middle school students on the water cycle and the effects of climate change on Southern California water resources. The event is sponsored by the
Orange County Water District.
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Exploring Your Universe - this is an event that takes place on UCLA's campus and is
sponsored by UCLA's Astronomy Live! AOS has a booth with activities and lessons and activities for elementary to middle school students on weather and climate (and more recently carbon dioxide uptake by plants).
Talks/Seminars
- Atmosphere, Oceans, Climate and You: 3rd Grade Assembly, Citizens of the World Charter School - An hour long lesson that covered the differences between weather and climate, the greenhouse effect, anthropogenic climate change, the tragedy of the commons, and sustainable solutions to mitigate climate change.
- Atmosphere and Ocean Science Overview: Colegio Lux Mundi - In May of 2015, I spent roughly a month in the Dominican Republic (where the majority of my family resides) due to a family emergency. The week before I was set to head back to LA, I was given the opportunity to speak to the junior class of Colegio Lux Mundi in Santo Domingo about the Atmopsheric and Oceanic Science field (which is all but non-existent in the Dominican Repbulic). I went over the different aspects of the field, the societal problems the science is helping to solve as well as potential universities and careers for interested students. I look forward to sparking more interest in the Earth science field with future seminars at Dominican schools in the future.
- California Drought and Climate Change (Exploring your Universe) -
Dr. Baird Langenbrunner (then a PhD candidate) and myself gave a talk on the relation between the recent/present California drought and climate change. The talk was given as part of the "Science Talks" at Exploring Your Universe 2014 to a general audience of parents (of all professions) and their children (elementary to high school students).
- Climatepedia Seminar - A panel of AOS graduate students held a question and answer seminar with undergraduate students in
the Climatepedia organization (an undergraduate environmental activism group). The purpose was to give the Climatepedia members (many of whom have no scientific background) a basic understanding of the climate system and answer questions they had given us beforehand to aid them in their own grassroots climate activism.
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The Poetry of Nature (Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA) - A panel of AOS graduate gave a short seminar and Q&A panel on the climate system to the patrons of an interpretive dance (with weather being the subject of the dance) recital. The theme of the talk revolved around expressing how we, as scientists, appreciate and interpret the poetry inherent in the dynamics of the Earth system. This was certainly one of the more unique outreach events we have done, but I can truly say it was extremely fulfilling to have the opportunity to relate the profound, yet simple, beauty of science to this particular audience.
Educational Articles
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California Metal Photo: Ocean Education - My advisor (Jim McWilliams) and I were both asked to contribute articles to the ocean education section of this website. The site consists of of California coastal photography and ocean education articles written by various scientists.
Other outreach events include:
- Setting up info sessions run by AOS graduate students with various undergraduate student groups at UCLA (CALPIRG, Climatepedia, and others)
- Local LA school visits - graduate students will visit local LA elementary, middle, and high schools and give info sessions on our own research intersts
as well as inform students about what they need to do if they want to become scientists (and hopefully inspire some to join our field in a couple of years!).
- Graduate student run coding seminars for AOS undergraduates. Anyone who is in science or engineering research knows
that learning the basics of coding (whether it be Matlab, Python, or C) is essential.