Educational Outreach Volunteer Opportunities

The Materials Research Science & Engineering Center offers a variety of K-12 outreach opportunities during the academic year. We are always looking for more volunteers to help with these programs. In the past, most of our volunteers have been graduate students and postdoctoral associates, but we welcome undergraduates, professors, and staff to volunteer as well.

The biggest volunteer opportunities that MRSEC coordinates are the Chute And Northwestern Science Education (CHANSE) and the Nichols Middle School Science Club programs. A group of 10-20 middle school students are led by 2-4 Northwestern volunteers in fun and educational science experiments. We are looking for volunteers who could lead or help with two or three sessions a quarter. We have a variety of books to help the leaders formulate a lesson plan, and the MRSEC project coordinator can help buy the materials.

The time commitment for leaders is about 4 hours per session including planning and 2 hours per session for helpers. If you are shy and don't want to stand in front of the students, you can volunteer to help with the lesson planning and preparation work. The Chute Science Club runs on Tuesdays from 3:45pm to 4:45pm, and the Nichols Science Club runs on Thursdays from 3:45pm to 4:45pm. Both schools have large populations of minority students, who are traditionally under-represented in the science and engineering disciplines, and many of the students come from low-income families. This is a great way to help our community!

Several times during the year, school groups come to Northwestern campus to tour our research facilities. MRSEC is looking for volunteers who can show their labs to these visiting students. This is a great way to help out if you only want to make a commitment of a few hours a year.

The Center would like to explore the possibility of building an outreach team whose members could go to neighboring schools a couple of times a year. The volunteers may do classroom demonstrations or judge a science fair.

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact mrc@northwestern.edu.