Event(s) Summary
Number of Events Organized During Brain Awareness Week:
37012.25
Year:
2015
Type of Events Held:
- Conference/Forum
- Exhibit
- Lab Tour
- Lecture/ Briefing
Target Audiences:
- Elementary school students(1-5)
- High School students(9-12)
- Middle school students(6-8)
Approximate Number of People Reached:
300
Details of Major Brain Awareness Week Events/Activities:
1. Summary: UCLA’s Brain Awareness Week event was held from March 9-13, 2015 and brought 300 students from underserved, Title 1 schools to UCLA for a full day of neuroscience-related activities. Our participants were 300 4th-12th grade students from Animo Leadership High School, Culver City Middle School, Millikan Middle School, Aspire Titan Academy Elementary School, and Fairfax High School. Each day consisted of neuroscience hands-on activities (including basic neuroscience concepts, anatomy of a real human brain, and in-depth demonstrations on brain function and disorders), laboratory tours, a campus tour, and a career panel with faculty members, administrators, and graduate and undergraduate students. The event was very successful, as evidenced by our verbal and written feedback from the participants, their teachers, and our faculty and volunteers. In addition to our 300 gradeschoolers (approximately 60 from each school listed above) and their teachers, we had an incredibly diverse volunteer workforce: 30 graduate students, 20 undergraduates, 10 laboratories, 7 faculty members, and 5 administrators directly contributed to the success of the event. As the event director, I was very satisfied with the level of attendants from both participants and volunteers; feedback from all of these groups indicate that all involved enjoyed themselves and learned about the brain.
Event Planning & Publicity
Publicity Methods Used:
- Emails
- Posters/Flyers
- Press Release/Media Advisory
- Website
Which of These Publicity Methods Was The Most Successful?
Resources
Of the Dana Foundation publications/resources distributed at your event(s), if any, please indicate the three most popular. Please choose up to three. If "other," please indicate below:
- More Mindbogglers!
- BAW Pencils and Erasers
- The Mindboggling Workbook
What other downloadable materials would you like the Foundation to provide?
- Activities/Experiments
- New Puzzles/Games
Which BAW graphic materials did you use in publicizing your events?
- BAW Flyer
Feedback & Keys to Success
How do you feel BAW participation benefited your organization and the local community?
We have been hosting this week-long event for over a decade now. This year, we had some new collaborators in our faculty members and graduate students, which made us realize that the quality of our program is still improving. Next year we hope to include a hands-on workshop with faculty and graduate students that is based on their own research. Additionally, we feel as if our program is becoming a real resource for local schools, and we are looking for ways to accommodate more schools.
Please share any suggestions or lessons learned that may help others plan future events:
With funding getting tighter, we applied to three separate organizations for support. We found that accommodating more than 60 students is overwhelming for our hands-on stations. We also included a question panel for high schoolers about going to college, and we collected so many questions from them that we could not answer them all, but they reported that it was very helpful! Finally, we rely on fairly low-tech teaching materials that we have started sharing with teachers for classroom applications.
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