Education and Outreach Sends Out Packages for Good Little Students

Becky Sims packs up an “Algae to Energy” kit to send off to a classroom.

Petri dishes, aquarium tubing, grass seeds and magnifying glasses—these are just a few of the items that Becky Sims, teaching lab coordinator for Education and Outreach, packs into boxes to ship out to classrooms all over the country each week.

The kits enable a classroom of students to grow algae and germinate switchgrass for biofuel experiments and to unleash caterpillars on different corn varieties to see how much they’ll eat. Sims sends them out to teachers who have attended previous workshops and teacher institutes at BTI. The free shipments are part of Education and Outreach’s efforts to link teachers and scientists to enrich STEM education.

E&O kits by the numbers:

• 105 kits sent out in 2015
• 3,221 participating students this year
• 32 teachers teaching E&O labs this year
• 9 states
• 4 different labs available, with #5 in development

Locations of schools that received and used BTI Education and Outreach classroom activities in 2015.