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Outreach Activities

The School of Medical Sciences offers a comprehensive outreach programme in the biosciences to Primary and Secondary Schools throughout North-East Scotland.

Getting down to the detail at an Association for Science Education (ASE) workshop.

Events include pupil workshops and teacher in service days, curriculum –specific lectures and bioscience career talks. Academic staff also contribute to TechFest, Aberdeen's annual festival of science, technology, engineering and maths.

Dr Andy Schofield, School of Medical Sciences,
gives a talk on Human Genetics at a North East School.

Further details available from the Outreach Co-ordinator Dr Joy Perkins

Pupil Workshops

Eighty S2 pupils from two local schools, St Machar and Old Machar Academies, attended two half-day workshops organised by the School of Medical Sciences.

An S2 workshop at the University of Aberdeen 'Microbes: In Sickness & in Health'

The theme of the event was 'Microbes: In Sickness & In Health'; both workshops were designed to provide pupils with an insight into the bugs that help human health as well as those which are potentially deadly.

Piecing together the evidence - mystery microbe jigsaws.

And comments from the pupils...

• It was really fun and I'm thinking of taking biology at Standard Grade.
• I wish school were like this.
• I learnt a lot of things, I did not know.

Pupils hard at work in our newly refurbished laboratories.

Teacher Inservice Days

In May 2005, academic staff from the College of Life Sciences & Medicine hosted a professional development day for Biology teachers. Teachers were given the opportunity to undertake the following experiments relevant to the Advanced Higher Biology syllabus:

• The antimicrobial effects of tea-tree oil (Dr Joy Perkins, School of Medical Sciences)
• Analysing data on predator/prey cycles (Dr Martyn Gorman, School of Biological Sciences)
• Yeast killer toxin bioassays (Dr Ian Stansfield, School of Medical Sciences)
• Plant/fungal interactions (Dr Eunice Allan, School of Biological Sciences)
• Bacterial growth and bacteriophage assays (Prof Maggie Smith, School of Medical Sciences)

Biology teachers learning about all creatures great and small!

Men & microbes!

As part of the event and to promote the diverse job and career opportunities available for bioscience students Professor Andy Porter delivered a short 15 minute talk entitled ‘Careers for Bioscientists in the 21st Century.

Forthcoming outreach events include:

• A Bioscience careers evening for teachers, parents and pupils (Feb. 2006)
• A continuing professional development (CPD) microbiology workshop for Aberdeenshire school technicians (January 2006)
• Christmas and Easter lectures for S5 and S6 pupils (Dec. 2005 and April 2006)
• A Science Discovery Day as part of National Science Week (March, 2006)