Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

Slippery Rock Students prepared videotaped lessons about the brain and brain health. I took those to several Boy and Girl scout troop meetings where the students listened to some activities lessons and directions on Ipads and I provided some hands-on activities. The scouts completed the pipe cleaner neuron, protect the brain and touch a brain lessons provided by BAW education materials. Additionally, scouts made helmets for eggs and tested them and talked about why helmets were important for brain safety (huge hit). Lastly, scouts earned the healthy brain scout badge. These particular groups of scouts are from rural western PA and for most had never heard about neuro-related topics. They were generally excited, several had siblings that asked to join, and were engaged throughout the whole program. It was very popular with the troop leaders as well and we were asked to do this again with more troops.

Specifically, it allows my Slippery Rock students to have a direct positive impact on the local community while building skills on preparing and delivering age-appropriate lessons. Additionally, as a rural area, it is often the first time these scouts/attendees are exposed to neuro-related lessons/materials and often the first time exposed to female scientists (I and some of my students are female).

We were initially stumped on how to continue to support BAW initiatives in a rural area as many do not have wifi and locations where scouts meet did not have the equipment to facilitate virtual events. We came up with pre-recording lessons and using Ipdas. This allowed me to have several stations going on at these troop events (once fully vaccinated and with proper PPE, I facilitated these events).

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