Science communication, education, and outreach are incredibly important to me. Because of this, I have volunteered and taught through numerous Cornell-affiliated organizations during the course of my PhD. These include:
Skills for Public Engagement (PLSCI 3940 - Cornell undergraduate/graduate class, guest speaker presenting the seed dispersal game)
Teaching Assistant for Plant Genetics (PLBRG 2250)
Developed Course Materials
I developed an activity called “Cabbages and their cousins: the dogs of the plant world” where students identify shared morphology between modern cabbages and their wild, undomesticated Brassica ancestor. The students then create a “super cabbage” with all of the domesticated products glued onto a wild Brassica plant. Teach this activity yourself using the materials available on my GitHub page!
In collaboration with Aimee Schulz, we refined a outreach event called, “Plant Domestication and Adaptation: A Seed Dispersal Game” that Aimee developed as part of the ASPB Conviron Scholars program. We have presented this game to numerous grade levels, class sizes, and formats (in person, online). This activity has students build “seeds” (note cards) optimized for wind-based dispersal in the wild. In the second round, students domesticate their seeds to be optimized for their ease of harvest within farmer fields. Our teaching materials are available on the Buckler Lab website and Bitbucket repository. To expand the adoption of this game, we presented a poster at the 2023 Maize Genetics Conference. Our poster and zines are available on Bitbucket! A video of us implementing this game virtually is below.
Teaching Experience in More Detail
These are all of the outreach/teaching events I have participated in:
2022 - Taught two workshops as part of the Research and Education Activities for Community Teachers (REACT) program to 25-30 elementary to high school teachers from across New York State titled: “Cabbages and their cousins: the dogs of the plant world” and “Plant domestication and adaptation, a seed dispersal game.”
2022 - Taught one in-person workshop on Plant Domestication and Adaptation to the thrid grade class at Freeville Elementary School.
2022 – Taught four in-person classes as part of the GRASSHOPR program to 15 students at the Southern Cayuga Junior/High school. The four classes were named “a-MAIZE-ing diversity: How plant breeders make your favorite foods even better.” Taught students about natural versus artificial selection with various hands-on activities ranging from DNA extraction using strawberries, generating, and testing hypotheses on what grains ‘pop’, creating and domesticating wild seeds, and identifying shared plant morphology between wild and domesticated plants.
2022 - Taught three in-person workshops at the one day Expanding Your Horizons conference titled ‘Plant Domestication and Adaptation: A Seed Dispersal Game” to 40 middle school students and parents.
2021 - Graduate Teaching Assistant for Plant Genetics. The assistantship entailed teaching two lab sections to a total of 20 students, creating lab materials (quizzes, lab lectures, slides, pre-lab videos), grading exams, and running various experiments with students.
2021 - Taught two virtual workshops at Expanding Your Horizons titled ‘Plant Domestication and Adaptation: A Seed Dispersal Game” at appropriate NY State Science Standards levels for elementary and middle school students.
Video of Aimee and I implementing the seed dispersal game