There is a growing national trend to more formally promote service as an integral part of higher education. Ours is the first graduate program in the JHU Krieger School of Arts and Sciences to acknowledge the outreach activities of our students with a formal certificate.

The CMDB program offers a certificate of recognition to graduate students in the CMDB program who have demonstrated a commitment to scientific teaching/service in their local community by completing a total of 50 hours of service over the course of their graduate career. Service must involve participation in pre-approved outreach activities that are reviewed by CMDB faculty.

The overall goals of this effort are to encourage CMDB participation in established science outreach programs and thus bolster the impact of these programs in our local communities. It is our hope that increasing the number of CMDB students engaged in outreach will further diversify the CMDB student body by enhancing minority student recruitment into scientific careers and/or the CMDB graduate program. Furthermore, by providing CMDB students with opportunities for outreach, we are broadening their career options in both science teaching and science policy.

These are some of the opportunities afforded to our students in community outreach.

BioEYES

BioEYES is a K-12 science education program which provides classroom-based learning opportunities through the use of live zebrafish. BioEYES is designed to incorporate teacher empowerment and provides professional development seminars and a co-teaching experience with trained science consultants, called outreach educators.

MInDS

Mentoring to Inspire Development in Science (MInDS) is a graduate student-run mentoring group and an organization founded by the Johns Hopkins PhD Program in Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology, and Biophysics. The goal of MInDS is to increase scientific knowledge and development within the CMDB Program and the greater scientific community through impactful conversations about increasing scientific communication and understanding among the Hopkins and Baltimore community at large.

BioREU

The JHU BioREU is a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site funded by the National Science Foundation. The 10-week summer program is designed to provide an intensive, mentored research experience for undergraduates, especially those attending institutions with limited research opportunities. The focus of the REU program is visualization of macromolecules in biological research.

Sample list of outreach activities can be found here.