Jasmine Childress, PhD
Girls Inc. and The Reading Clinic's "Curie-osity" Program
I led an interactive activity session for 4-6th grade girls in which we dissected California horn snails and looked for the 19 possible trematode parasite species. I taught the basic life cycle of the parasites and simple lab skills, such as handling, care, and maintenance of compound microscopes. The goal of this program is to provide young girls with the opportunity to interact with successful and emerging female scientists with the hope of inspiring them to pursue education within the STEM fields. The project culminated in the girls writing and publishing a book of their experiences with.
I HEART STEM Conference
Myself and two other black female graduate students, Timnit Kefela and Simone Stewart, led the plenary event for this conference that was broken into two parts: a presentation and mini-breakout sessions. We presented facts about womxn in STEM, ways to tackle the idea of “self-selection,” and how to figure out where you belong in STEM. We then broke into three sessions with 115 womxn-identified students from local high schools: 1) Sharing stories about belonging, 2) Introduction to Self-Care, and 3) Language Café.
UCSB's School for Scientific Thought
A fellow grad and myself designed a course for local underrepresented high school students that introduced them to topics in biology outside of their standard curriculum. We drew on our own learned experiences to integrate multiple teaching strategies through hands-on and active learning. We tailored the topics of the class to what the students were interested in, with the goals of enhancing participation and confidence of underrepresented students in STEM.
and More!
I have had the privilege of serving as a 1) mentor to underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students, 2) panelists for many workshops about the graduate school journey and DEI work, 3) representative on university committees to increase retention of marginalized students, and more. Please contact me for more information or potential outreach collaborations!