OUTREACH
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The Great Strawberry Caper |
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In collaboration with the UPitt Biology's Outreach Program Director, Dr. Alison Slinskey-Legg, the Ashman Lab has developed a middle school curriculum ('The Strawberry Caper') that meets middle school standards in genetics, ecology, agriculture, and statistics (http://www.biology.pitt.edu/outreach). The strawberry caper is a novel inquiry-based curriculum that is implemented with the department's Mobile Science Lab (http://www.biology.pitt.edu/k-12-outreach/teacher-professional-development/wor). This curriculum will connect students to the scientific endeavor in the context of a criminal case storyline in which the students will design experiments to test hypotheses and use deductive reasoning to provide expert evidence for the case. The first teacher workshop was conducted August 2011. Hands on activities in the greenhouse and laboratory were key to teacher development and were also a lot of fun! |
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Plants, Pollinators, and YOU! |
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To increase awareness the importance of plant-pollinator interactions in creating the food we eat and the quality of life we lead, members of the Ashman lab have given presentations and designed activities on plant-pollinator interactions for 4th grade classes at the Falk Laboratory School. Emphasis was on the interconnectedness of life and importance of biodiversity. Future activities will involve including plant-pollinator unit of the school restoration and the impact of invasive species on those interactions, as well as reaching out to other schools. |
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POP-UP! |
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The Ashman Lab and the PittBio Outreach department recently created a program for pollination education for children, POP-UP! (Pollination Outreach Project for Underserved Programs). The program begins with hearing about pollination through demonstrations of what pollination involves and why it is important. We then transition to seeing pollination by dissecting flowers in groups and transferring the pollen we find from the anthers to the stigma. In the end, we do pollination through a fun game designed by the Ashman Lab to teach concepts of successful pollen transfer, where children act as either "pollinators" or "flowers". We have used the Pitt Mobile Lab to bring our program out to day camps located in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and we are looking forward to continuing our program through after-school sessions and other events. Through assessing pre and post-evaluation data of participants' understanding of pollination, we have seen a significantly increased awareness of the process of pollination, what can be a pollinator, and knowledge of important crops that are pollinated by insects. |
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Outreach in the Community |
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The Ashman lab is involved in several out-reach programs locally and nationally including the Botanical Society of America's 'Planting Science' and Education Programs at Phipps Conservatory. We also have hosted groups of students who have participated in the PA Academy of Science |
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 Pittsburgh Homeschool Collective visits the Ashman lab and learns about research on plant adaptation to serpentine soils from George Meindl.
Follow George! At (Phipps Botany in Action) |
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Sweta Patel, a seventh grade student from Pleasant Hills Middle School, was awarded a first place at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science Region 7 competition held in February. Her project focused on the differences between anther number and petal size among sexes in a woodland strawberry population. She will be going on to compete in the state competition in May with her project, titled "Effect of sex and family on physical characteristics of strawberries." Congratulations and good luck Sweta! |
Matt Koski shares his research on flower color evolution with Cleveland youth. In the UltraBee Vision maze! |
2011 TEACHER WORKSHOP |
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