This week on Books and Adventures we’re joined by Ken White, manager of educational programs at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), an advanced research facility run by the U.S. Department of Energy.
BNL was founded in 1947, with a mandate to promote research across the fields of physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. I began by asking Ken how long BNL has been involved with schools outreach and science education.
'The Laboratory has been a supporter of science education pretty much since its inception. Science education and workforce development are part of our mission at BNL, and we have been fortunate to have leadership support to enable greater interaction with our academic community. College students have come here for internships since the early 1950s and the Lab frequently had open houses and school outreach programs well back into the early 1960s.
Over the past six years we have developed hands-on inquiry-based experiences for middle and high school students to enable them to conduct science similar to that of our researchers. These are offered at cost and have become quite popular with local schools. These programs have expanded the way in which we satisfy our responsibility for educating the next generation of scientists.
Successful offerings need to be exciting, with engaging activities that enable students to realize science is accessible to them. The best programs often include a story as well – we try to humanize the program by relating it to our scientific staff actually working on the problems being presented. Programs that show how the academic work applies to real life problems we face as a society tend to do well.'
What can a visit to BNL do for students in mainstream schooling?
