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Breakfast of Science Champions 2014

November 20, 2014

Breakfast of Science Champions 2014

Joan and kids

CAPS reprised its role as one of many hosting Centers for this year's Breakfast of Science Champions (BOSC) event, held on Thursday, November 13, 2014. BOSC is an event coordinated by OSU's STEM Outreach program, partnering with Columbus City Schools, to bring middle school aged students to campus for breakfast, facility tours and most importantly, hands-on experiments. Students interact directly with Faculty, Staff and Students, learning why careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math are so important. 

The Hubbard Mastery School brought a 6th grade group comprised of 44 students and 4 chaperones. The day started with an introduction to CAPS over breakfast, as well as a short video, "Secrets of the Plant Genome Revealed". Joanna Gardner, CAPS Program Associate, facilited the research space tours, including the TML, CCBL, ABRC and Greenhouse. Joan Leonard and Gary Posey (CAPS Greenhouse Program Manager and Superintendant) created a Nitrogen Fixation experiment allowing each student to hypothesize and collect data from their own soybean plant, finding how the addition of nitrogen in soybean plants effects plant height, leaves and nodules. Volunteer Wei Li, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Doseff lab, was also on hand to assist in the experiemnt prep area.  

Pre-event and post-event  activities and surverys were administered to gauge how the students' thoughts on STEM interest, careers and education may have changed from their experience. 

root nodules