STEM Outreach – REU Student Mentors at the LES Girls Club: NYU MRSEC 1420073
Turning the Tables on Mentoring
• Summer REU students (Y2014) mentor more than 200
middle school summer camp girls in eight sessions over
four weeks at the Lower East Side Girls Club, learning
through teaching. Now an annual event.
• Inquiry-based learning while exploring fundamentals
behind phase transformations, using the science of nail
polish (paint) drying. MRSEC-REU students guided the
campers with inquisitive questions about the observed
phenomena under high-end microscopes while teaching
techniques of microscopy to capture images of paint
drying.
• Y2015 REU participants also attended the Biobase
Science Happy Hour (June 23) with Professor Sarah
Richardson (Harvard), a historian and philosopher of
science who studies race and gender in the life
sciences and the social dimensions of scientific
knowledge.
REU students teaching “Watching Paint Dry” at the LES Girls Club
Top: REU students Marjorie Lopez (UPR) and Jasmin Jeffrey (Hampton)
Bottom: REU students Kelsey Collins (OSU) and Kevin Hung (Cornell)
(http://www.girlsclub.org/)
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY MRSEC