A Brock University community outreach program is making science education more accessible for youth in Niagara and beyond.

Offered by the Faculty of Mathematics and Science’s Lab Links team, Lab-in-a-Box brings science — and the Brock students who enthusiastically study science every day — to schools and community groups for free.

The initiative has been running for two years with generous contributions from the national science education outreach program Let’s Talk Science, and recently received a major boost when Professor of Biological Sciences Jeff Stuart received a National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) PromoScience grant, which is funded by the Government of Canada.

The three-year grant has allowed the Lab-in-a-Box program to expand considerably by purchasing new equipment and hiring more Brock students to develop and deliver learning modules to schools and community groups, including those serving underprivileged youth and students whose parents didn’t receive a post-secondary education.

Stuart came up with the idea for Lab-in-a-Box with Jacinta Dano, Supervisor of the Roy and Lois Cairns Health and Bioscience Research Complex greenhouse facility, who wanted to expand on the success of the Lab Links to Careers undergraduate laboratory skills certification program.

“Brock has a large group of highly skilled undergraduate and graduate students who are excited to share their knowledge and enthusiasm with young people,” says Dano. “They have been instrumental in developing the laboratory exercises that they then bring directly to young people in their classrooms and clubs.”

Brock’s Lab Links team.

The team, led by Lab Links Co-ordinator Alysha Johnson, has now assembled an equipment lending library that allows it to leave sophisticated university-level equipment behind after visiting a school.

Teachers love the Lab-in-a-Box program and want to offer similar engaging lessons on their own, but many don’t have the required resources, says Johnson.

“Modern science often requires specialized and expensive tools and instruments that are not available to all individual schools. Lab-in-a-Box addresses this need by making lab equipment, expertise and support available. Our learning exercises range from photosynthesis experiments using live algae, to coding, engineering and climate change,” says Johnson.

Equipment can be borrowed through Lab-in-a-Box for a few days to several weeks to allow for ongoing projects or to conduct several interconnected experiments.

Lab-in-a-Box learning modules follow the Government of Ontario’s science and technology curriculum and can be modified to engage students whose first language isn’t English, for example, or to consider Indigenous ways of teaching and learning.

The program is already booked until next March, with sessions planned at District School Board of Niagara and Niagara Catholic District School Board schools as well as community groups such as Welland Community House, Boys and Girls Clubs and Anishnabeg Outreach.

Samantha Booth, Program Chair of Science for Saint Paul Catholic High School, says Brock’s Lab Links team “delivers high quality labs that students wouldn’t have the opportunity to otherwise have in a high school setting.”

Her Grade 12 students learned “invaluable skills,” such as how to use a spectrophotometer and how to identify, calibrate and use different micropipettes, she says.

Paul Flower, a Grade 4 teacher at Kate S. Durdan Public School, says the program offers students the opportunity to become more interested in science.

“By participating in hands-on activities, our students have become more curious about the world around them. It serves as an excellent introduction to science for many of our young students,” he says.

Brock’s team hopes to expand its outreach programming even further by developing a professional development program that would allow Grade 1 to 12 teachers to learn how to use the advanced scientific equipment and then bring that equipment back to their classrooms.

“We’re certainly very excited by what’s happened with Lab-in-a-Box in just two years, and we’re grateful to be able to expand on what we can offer to the community,” says Stuart. “Thanks to NSERC funding and our ongoing support from Let’s Talk Science, Brock University will continue to help local youth engage in STEM.”

Teachers can request a Lab-in-a-Box kit for their classroom by emailing letstalkscience@brocku.ca