CORE--Community Outreach and Education

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The facility has been involved in a number of outreach programs, many of which are sponsored by COEP to introduce public school students to careers in science and toxicology. Recent examples are highlighted here. ¿ An annual mini-workshop, "Discovering the Scientist Within", sponsored by The Association for Women in Science (AWIS), has provided a unique opportunity to share hands-on flow cytometry activities with middle-school girls and introduce them to careers that utilize this technology. A similar program has been presented to visiting high school age students from the Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE), a unique pre-college enrichment program targeting historically underrepresented and other educationally disadvantaged students in Oregon. ¿ The COEP has recently developed a website, Unsolved Mysteries of Human Health, that has a goal of introducing students and the general public to complex research methods and instrumentation as highlighted by Center investigators' own research. One feature of this website, "Going with the Flow", highlighted the research in Dr. Kerkvliet's laboratory in order to show students how a flow cytometer operates and how flow data is used to learn about dioxin toxicity (http://www.unsolvedmysteries.oregonstate.edu/flow_cytometry_01.shtml). ¿ A major contribution to the field of toxicology was completed by Julie Oughton and Dr. Kerkvliet who co-authored a unit section in the Current Protocols in Toxicology, "Immune Cell Phenotyping Using Flow Cytometry", which was published in 2005. ¿ Several seminars have been presented to various immunology classes at Oregon State University to introduce the principles of flow cytometry to budding immunologists, as well as hands-on demonstrations of the bench top analyzers.