The BBB program provides opportunities for students to engage with the local community while honing their scientific communication skills.
The BBB program has hosted Kids Judge Neuroscience every year for the past 16 year. At this unique brain fair, third graders from local schools have an opportunity to participate in many hands-on activities to learn about the brain. BBB students volunteer to conduct these demonstrations and to teach the youngsters. Our young visitors appear to thoroughly enjoy themselves as they discover the nuances of taste, the physics of appreciating music, and the shared brain features across the animal kingdom.
Dr. Lori Flanagan-Cato (BBB Co-director and Associate Professor in Psychology) offers an academically based community service (ABCS) course called Everyday Neuroscience. In this course, BBB students design laboratory activities for local high school students to enhance their knowledge and stoke their interest in science. For the past two years the course partnered with students at Robeson High School (42nd and Ludlow Streets). The most popular activity was the sheep brain dissection, which was the first opportunity at dissection for the high school students. The BBB students bolstered their science communication skills as they formed warm social connections with the West Philadelphia students.
