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K-12 Students Flock To ToxTown In San Diego: Results of an SOT K-12 Education Outreach Workshop
Citation:
Bhat, V., M. Bourgeois, W. Gray, J. Sapiro, A. Nguyen, M. Gwinn, A. Slitt, AND B. Eidemiller. K-12 Students Flock To ToxTown In San Diego: Results of an SOT K-12 Education Outreach Workshop. Society of Toxicology (SOT) 2016 Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, March 13 - 17, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
To attend and present at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) 55th Annual Meeting in March 2016. This poster describes the K-12 Outreach event held at the SOT 2015 Annual Meeting in order to increase SOT member involvement in K-12 outreach activities.
Description:
Just prior to the start of the 2015 Annual Meeting in San Diego, hundreds of K-12 students, teachers, and science enthusiasts visited the ToxTown booth at the annual San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering grand finale event, EXPO Day. Over 20,000 attendees participated in EXPO Day’s 130 booths and SOT was well-represented in ToxTown. The Southern California Regional Chapter of SOT (SCCSOT) hosted and funded the booth through a SOT Regional Chapter Strategic Funding grant and through corporate K-12 sponsor funds, with support of the SOT Education Committee and K-12 Education Subcommittee. The students toured ToxTown by first watching a Risk Bites episode on YouTube (www.riskbites.com) produced by 2015 SOT Communications Award winner Dr. Andrew Maynard, who was on hand in the flesh! Students then progressed to a caffeine module learning about dose-response and that caffeine is not always bad for you. Folding Handangos (www.scrubclub.org) to learn about proper hand washing and germs captivated the younger crowd. The favorite activity was Tic-Tac-Tox, in which students spun the cubes to answer toxicology True or False questions hoping to get three-in-a-row to win an SOT-captioned Einstein. The last stop on the tour was a participant survey. Three-quarters of the high school student participants surveyed had “nothing” or “minimal knowledge” of toxicology prior to the event, and 53% agreed that the booth activities helped them “learn about the role of toxicologists in creating a safer and healthier world”. The majority of respondents “strongly agreed” that the activities influenced their decision to become scientist or pursue a college degree in toxicology or related health sciences. More than 70% of participants found their “Interaction with a toxicologist at the booth” to be “very informative”. Additional itemized survey results will be included in this presentation. Many thanks to SCCSOT and our global slate of SOT members and Annual Meeting attendee volunteers who ensured the event was a tremendous success, as evidenced by the non-stop traffic all day and the multiple social media tweets and “likes”!