STEM

Yale’s Program in Physics, Engineering & Biology and the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences offers summer research laboratory opportunities for local New Haven high school students. The students learn to use numerical simulations to model geological flows and have significant exposure to scientific programming, the Unix environment, and running large-scale simulations on high performance computation clusters. Apprentices gain insight into STEM careers and undergraduate and graduate fellowships.

Advances in chemistry have been behind some of the most significant improvements in our quality of life over the last century. Whether it’s medicine, cosmetics, or movie effects, chemistry is everywhere. In this one-hour interactive show, students and their family members are introduced to basic concepts in chemistry through a series of magical demonstrations by experts from the Yale Department of Chemistry.

TeachTech is Code Haven’s one-day conference for middle and high school teachers interested in incorporating computer science into their classrooms. Teachers learn about computer science fundamentals, how to demonstrate these concepts to students in an engaging way, and basic software that they can implement in their classrooms to make computer science more appealing to students.

Yale undergraduate student volunteers teach weekly science classes at local New Haven elementary schools, using engaging demonstrations and hands-on activities. Through these lessons, Demos hopes to expose students to new STEM concepts and build excitement for science.

Established in April 2019, Environmental Education Collaborative (EECO) is Yale’s first student organization dedicated solely to inspiring a generation of environmentally-conscious K-12 students in New Haven. Through place-based environmental curricula, EECO builds strong relationships with local students, schools, coalitions, and community organizations. Volunteers teach weekly lessons, lead interactive activities, and collaborate with community leaders to develop sustained environmental education projects that reinforce student learning beyond the classroom.

First at Yale raise awareness of FIRST® Robotics and offers mentoring to local high school robotics teams in New Haven, to robotics teams globally through video calls, and volunteers at tournaments throughout New England, New York, and beyond.

The Flipped Science Fair, hosted by Open Labs at Yale, flips the traditional science fair format on its head: middle school student judges evaluate graduate students and post docs presenting their current research. Middle school students learn about cutting-edge research from real Yale scientists in a small group setting, with plenty of opportunities to ask questions and participate in hands-on demonstrations. The presenters learn how to tailor their research pitch to a general audience, with emphasis on keeping talks exciting, understandable, and relevant.

Girls’ Science Investigations (GSI) is a program that empowers girls in science by giving them both guidance and hands-on experience. On four Saturdays throughout the year, GSI runs theme-based programs for middle school girls to encourage them to pursue careers in science. Recent program themes have included “The World of Rockets” and “The Electromagnetic World.” Yale University professors and students teach the programs, conduct demonstrations, and lead the girls in activities in laboratory environments.

Have Bones, Will Travel is a program offered to elementary, middle, and high schools in New Haven. The program aims to foster science enthusiasm and interest in the nursing profession. Volunteers from the Yale School of Nursing teach students about the marvels of human anatomy through engaging hands-on activities while emphasizing the importance of decisions that can affect their long-term health.

The Yale partnership with Hill Regional Career High School, a health-sciences magnet school in New Haven, provides high school students access to Yale classes, laboratories, and structured internships. In addition to the Anatomy Teaching Program, the Yale Simulation Academy invites students to the state-of-the-art Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation to practice hands-on medical treatments. Juniors who have graduated from the program serve as peer mentors.

The Julia Robinson Math Festival inspires students to explore the richness and beauty of mathematics through activities that encourage collaborative and creative problem-solving. At the festival, students choose from more than a dozen tables where volunteers, who come from various disciplines at Yale but are all lovers of mathematics, guide students through a set of intriguing math problems and puzzles, supporting students as they work together.

Sitting on eight acres, with impressive diversity of plant collections in six greenhouses and outdoor gardens, Marsh Botanical Garden (MBG) offers support for researchers, faculty, and students at Yale, as well as an informative and inspirational experience for visitors. MBG also hosts educational tours of its collections.

The Medical Specialty Exposure Program (MSEP) is a pipeline program that aims to empower URiM (underrepresented in medicine) high school students to choose career paths in medicine. Each spring, Resident physicians of diverse backgrounds in pediatrics, internal medicine, OB-GYN, psychiatry, and surgery specialties lead monthly case-based sessions geared toward exposing students to each field, developing clinical reasoning skills, and providing them with interactive learning and networking opportunities.

The North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO) is a contest in which high school students solve linguistics puzzles drawn from a variety of languages. The Yale Linguistics Department offers four training sessions for local high school students each fall, in preparation for the Open Round of NACLO in January. No experience required to participate.

Open Labs at Yale is a group of graduate students, postdocs, and other members of the university dedicated to scientific outreach to the local New Haven community and beyond. From Science Cafe events that feature graduate student talks and many demonstrations, to off-campus events at local schools, to content production for the web, Open Labs offers many opportunities for young people to become engaged in science. Open Labs also hosts the annual Flipped Science Fair for middle school students and brings students on as reviewers for scientific publications in the journal Frontiers for Young Minds.

Brain Education Day is an annual neuroscience event for for 100 students in Yale Pathways to Science. Students explore the brain with Yale’s top neuroscientists through speciman dissection, visits to the mock fMRI scanner, tours of the Yale Cushing Center, learning how the brain uses electricity to send signals, and controlling a robotic claw using electrical activity produced by their own muscles.

At Discover Chemistry Day, Pathways high school students take part in hands-on chemistry experiments that encourage inquiry, examination, and exploration. Students can work with a gas chromatographer, separate caffeine from tea, engage in simulations of receptor-binding molecules that give rise to our sense of smell, and much more. This event is hosted by graduate students in the Yale Department of Chemistry.

Pathways to Science high school students are invited to a one-day exploration of an array of scientific questions including, how do scientists measure earthquakes? What can we learn about brains from worms? What does the beginning of development look like? These hands-on sessions are led by Yale faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.

Pathology Day is a full-day exploration of how pathologists investigate diseases at the cellular level, extract valuable information from DNA, and even uncover the mysteries left behind after people have passed. Local high school students step into a day in the life of a cancer researcher, examine clinical cases with a pathology resident, and learn how community clinicians improve healthcare access with a high tech van.

During this event for Pathways students, bones take center stage. Students are introduced to the science behind human evolution and forensic anthropology through a series of hands-on exploratory demonstrations with real human bones and fossil casts. Students explore how our human ancestors lived and behaved, as well as how we evolve to become the species we are today.

The Pathways Summer Scholars program brings over 100 high school students from New Haven, West Haven, and Orange public schools to study science for two weeks on Yale’s campus. Summer Scholars provides an intensive, hands-on science curriculum that emphasizes discovery, critical thinking, and problem solving. Rising seniors have the opportunity to live on campus during the program and engage in a variety of college-prep enrichment activities. The curriculum is designed by Yale University faculty, graduate and professional students, as well as teachers from local public schools. Yale students serve a vital role as teaching assistants and mentors.

The Yale Society of Physics partners with other Yale organizations to teach and excite high school students about the physics of many everyday phenomena, such as juggling, dance, art, fire, and common electronics. Students apply math and science principles to better understand how physics can be applied in the real world.

Resonance is an annual event hosted by Synapse, the official outreach team of Yale Scientific Magazine, that brings high school students to Yale’s campus for a day of hands-on demonstrations, presentations by Yale professors, and tours of Yale’s science facilities. Breaking away from traditional scientific teaching, Resonance presents science in a way that is applicable to students’ daily lives and future goals.

Twice per year, Open Labs at Yale hosts the Science Café, where middle school students and their families learn about exciting new research at Yale from the scientists doing the work. The Science Cafe features interactive science demonstrations followed by three engaging, short talks from Yale reearchers.

This award-winning lecture series features scientists whose passion for their work inspires us all. Each event involves a lecture by a Yale professor and engaging science demonstrations by Yale college students. Science on Saturdays provides an opportunity for Yale scientists and residents of New Haven and beyond to come together over a shared sense of wonder. Past topics have included “How to Grow a New Head: The Secret of Eternal Life” and “Peering into the Dark Side of the Universe.”

SheCode aims to foster interest in innovative technology and problem-solving by teaching programming skills to young girls in a highly supportive environment. Through SheCode, Yale undergraduates teach New Haven middle and high school girls in Yale Pathways to Science how to create basic programs using JavaScript and Python, introducing them to game design, algorithms, and computer graphics.

Splash at Yale is a biannual event that brings local middle and high school students to Yale University for one day of unlimited learning. Students take classes in a variety of subjects taught by Yale undergraduate and graduate students. Students get to learn about things that they normally would not have access to, empowering them to find what they love to learn. Past classes have included Inroduction to Improv, Ethics Meets Self-Driving Cars, and Elementary Particle Physics. Splash at Yale also hosts Sprout, a similar program that gives students the opportunity to delve deeper into one topic in a series of three workshops.

STEM Mentors is a graduate student organization that serves to prepare and encourage young students to pursue STEM in college and in their careers. STEM Mentors organizes college-essay-writing workshops and college Q&A sessions to help move students forward in the exciting world of STEM.

The Neuroscience Outreach Program welcomes middle and high school student groups for school field trips to Yale. Students explore neuroscience on campus through lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and a tour of the Cushing Center, all led by current graduate students. At interactive demo stations, students can use their muscles to power a robotic claw, record electrical changes in neurons from a cockroach leg, compare brains from several animals, and learn how common brain teasers work. Local teachers can contact YaleNeuroscienceOutreach@gmail.com to schedule an event.

Urban Resources Initiative (URI) is a university not-for-profit partnership that has planted more than 10,000 trees in the city of New Haven. Its mission is to foster community-based land stewardship, promote environmental education, advance the practice of urban forestry, and provide Yale students with clinical learning opportunities. URI has been active in New Haven since 1991 and is dedicated to community participation in urban ecosystem management.

The Yale Farm is a lush and productive teaching farm that produces vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers, as well as providing a home to free-ranging chicken flocks and honey bees. It provides a place where the community can come together to learn about the agriculture and the complex systems that feed us. The farm hosts workshops, seminars, open workdays, and a program for New Haven public school second graders.

The Yale Pathways Research Internships (YPRI) connects highly qualified Yale Pathways students from New Haven and West Haven public schools with science research internships at Yale. During the summer, students participate in a series of workshops and activities that supplement their internship experiences and enhance their scientific research skills. Students are paired with Yale graduate student mentors, who provide guidance throughout the six-week internship experience.

Each year, the Yale Peabody Museum hosts several public events for the community, most notably the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy of Environmental and Social Justice event in January and ¡Fiesta Latina! in October. These events are free and open to the public and draw more than 8,000 people to the museum. The Peabody Museum also sponsors numerous lectures and talks throughout the year.

From dinosaurs to diamonds, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History presents four billion years of Earth's history under one roof. It houses a diverse collection of 13 million objects that includes Egyptian mummies, samurai swords, and animals and plants from across the world. The museum's paleontological collections rank among the most historically important fossil collections in the world. Not only can these collections be accessed by visiting the museum, but the Peabody's substantial online catalog makes digital images of more than 163,000 specimens, artifacts, and objects available to scholars and the public around the world.

Yale’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience Outreach Program welcomes middle and high school student groups to Yale. Students explore neuroscience on campus through lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and a tour of the Cushing Center, all led by current graduate students. At interactive demo stations, students can use their muscles to power a robotic claw, record electrical changes in neurons from a cockroach leg, compare brains from several animals, and learn how common brain teasers work. In the Cushing Center, volunteers partner with a talented librarian to lead students on a scavenger hunt to learn about the history of neuroscience at Yale and see a variety of brain specimens collected by Dr. Harvey Cushing.

The Yale Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) chapter is dedicated to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for all in STEM. A large component of this work includes science outreach to K–12 students within the New Haven area through hands-on demonstrations at a variety of events throughout the academic year and summer.

The Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association (YUAA) is Yale’s largest engineering club. Its members build rockets, birdlike planes, satellites, and robots/rovers. Through their outreach, YUAA works with Yale Pathways high school students to build small-scale versions of these objects, explaining the basic science governing them.

Yale University has a wide array of podcasts available from faculty, alumni, and distinguished visitors. These are available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, all free of charge. You can download episodes one at a time or you can subscribe to the entire series. Topics include arts and humanities, science and engineering, health and medicine, and the environment, as well as other areas of interest.

The Yale Physics department invites local students and their families to a night of hands-on demos led by physicists. Participants explore demonstrations of giant pendulums, mysterious sounds, electricity, the mysteries of levitation, and watch a science show performed by physics graduate students.