Generating, Analyzing, and Understanding Sensory and Sequencing Information

2016 Outreach Modules

2016 GAUSSI Outreach Activities:

5th Grade Classroom Module, Big Data: Collecting and analyzing large data sets. Students will participate in in collecting a sample of 4-5 people. Gathering information on height, weight, age, birth sex (or gender identity). Students will learn about the importance of random sampling and how to do a scatter plot.
GAUSSI Members: Adam Heck, Hailey Conover, Nadia Sampiao, & Zach Fox

5th Grade Classroom Module, Evolution: Students will begin to understand the theory of evolution by natural selection by creating a population of fictional “beasts” and observing evolution in action over multiple generations.
GAUSSI Members: Reyes Murrieta, Richard Berl, & Gareth Halladay.

5th Grade Classroom Module, Building Simple Microscopes: Students will build a simple microscopes in small groups. Students will then go and collect a sample of a naturally occurring element to view with the microscopes.
GAUSSI Members: Dylan Parker, Amanda Koch, Shannon Stiverson, & Chloe Stenkamp

5th Grade Classroom Module, Hurray for Histograms: Students will learn how to collect information called data and we will learn why making graphs with data is important. This is a continuation of concepts covered in “Building Simple Microscopes”  module.
GAUSSI Members: Julie Walker, Jessie Filer, & Charlotte Cialek

5th Grade Classroom Module, Building Genome DNA: Students will build a genome DNA out of paper and will then learn about the transfer of DNA to RNA and RNA to protein. GAUSSI trainees will highlight how if one change is made, how this impacts the genome. A focus will be placed on the importance of the order in which things are built.
GAUSSI Members: Shaun Cross, Bridget Eklund, Dayton Pierce, & Charles McDonald

1st Grade Classroom Module, Why Plants are Important. Students are introduced to the role plants in the ecosystems and their importance for humans. Students perform a planting and seed growth activity where they monitor the seedling they selected.
GAUSSI Members: Shea Moore-Farrell

Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) is a service-learning program intended to give students a hands-on learning experience in the engineering field while providing local and global not-for-profit organizations with technical work in accomplishing their goals for a greater cause. Student teams will partner with community organizations and academic mentors to address humanitarian, environmental, and community needs.
GAUSSI Members: Jasmine Nejad, Mike Mangalea, Ian McLean, Nick Grant, & Davashish Verde

Computational Biology and Genomics Workshop, at Todos Santos Center, Mexico. Dr. Sloan takes his computational biology and genomics workshop to Mexico to share with the local academic community. Topics covered in the 5 day workshop include: UNIX and Command Line Tools, RNA-seq Data Analysis, De Novo Transcriptome Assembly, Bacterial and Viral Genome Annotation and Analysis, Metagenomics and Metatranscriptomics, and Introduction to R and Data Visualization.
GAUSSI Members: Jessica Warren and Professor Daniel Sloan.

Science Olympiad Coaching, Fossil Ridge High School. Reyes Murrieta, Shaun Cross, & Bridget Ecklund, along with other CSU graduate students, co-coached student teams in for a variety of events. At the High School Science Olympiad State Finals on April 15 at Colorado School of Mines, FRHS teams came in 3rd and 4th in Microbe Mission event .  FRHS teams came in 1st and 5th in the Disease Detectives event. One FRHS team won the tournament and placed 24th overall at the Nationals in Dayton, Ohio on May 19, 2017.