Department of Chemistry
Community Outreach
Stem Day
Students from local high schools visit Brown for a half-day conference featuring an interactive panel discussion, breakout sessions, and a college access/success discussion, hosted by Chemistry. Faculty and students serve as group leaders and lead breakout sessions. Students may also serve on the student Q&A panel. 2024 STEM Day
RI ACS Project Seed
ACS Project SEED is a national program with the theme “hands-on research for high school students.” It brings students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds into college research laboratories for a summer internship. The RI program began in Summer 2018, hosting 9 students among Brown, University of RI, and Providence College. Faculty may elect to host a student in their groups to complete an 8-week summer project, and students may serve as mentors.
The Brown Advocate Program
The Brown Advocate Program is funded by an Advocate Grant from Science for Society & the Public. Local public schools have identified the need for slightly older peer mentors to help students through the science fair process one-on-one from September until their local science fairs in February/March. Mentoring takes place from September - May and involves guiding students through the science fair project process (choosing a project, forming a hypothesis, assisting in identifying appropriate data collection techniques, analyzing results and drawing conclusions, communicating data, and mock judging) and leading workshops on topics such as college access and resume building. While this program is currently hosed by the Chemistry Department, mentors are needed from throughout physical/life science, mathematics, engineering, and social science disciplines.
Brown University and community partners host other STEM-oriented activities with outreach components, through which Chemistry Department students, faculty, and postdocs can be involved. Graduate students may also design and instruct courses through Summer @ Brown, which brings thousands of high school students to campus each year.
Outreach Opportunities
Chemistry Department students and faculty can engage in a number of outreach and educational opportunities with students in K-12 schools to complement their research and teaching assistant responsibilities. Many of these opportunities also span across multiple departments at the university, connecting students in chemistry with peers throughout Brown.
Contact
Are you interested in department outreach? Please contact chemistry@brown.edu or be in touch with an administrative staff member.