“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

We love hitting the road with our 3D printed brain models, BioGift-ed brains, pipe cleaners, extensive collection of animal brains and beetle-scoured skulls – and some of the most knowledgeable, enthusiastic graduate and undergraduate students inspired by learning from and listening to others, and by sharing their own stories from the classroom and the lab…

“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

While we started by volunteering in a public middle school in Portland, Oregon, we’ve leapt at requests for visits from schools and communities across the Pacific Northwest – and beyond!

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

JUST BACK FROM SOUTHERN OREGON: Noggin in Grants Pass!

From North Middle School Art Teacher Michael Endicott…

Gray Matter in Grants Pass!

Teachers and other community members have housed us, fed us, laughed and learned with us, and we’ve driven through blizzards, over mountain ranges, past lava flows and forests to a host of extraordinary outreach experiences…

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination with reality, and instead of thinking of how things may be, see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

The best outreach is audience-driven, in the community itself. Going places challenges our own biases, and opens up possibilities for new directions, career opportunities, and greater understanding of the world in which we live. It exposes more people to their own investment in research and education, and makes that public investment palpable, present and real.

“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.” – Anna Quindlen

LEARN MORE: Synapsing for Science

This week we headed to Grants Pass, Oregon, about 4-5 hours south of Portland!

“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” –Aldous Huxley

Thanks to North Middle School art teacher Michael Endicott, we enjoyed room and board for seven volunteers, and spent a week learning from and teaching over 350 young people about ongoing neuroscience research!

“By the Shore” 24×26 oil and acrylic on wood 2011, by Jeff Leake

We loved making art, including ink gel prints of neuron forms. And we answered many insightful questions from this next generation of scientists and artists…

“Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop

MAKE YOUR OWN ART: Noggin STEAM Art Projects

And thank you Michael Endicott for gifting us an extraordinary pelican skull! It’s incredibly light, because of all the spaces within the bones…

LEARN MORE: How to Make a Bird Skull: Major Transitions in the Evolution of the Avian Cranium, Paedomorphosis, and the Beak as a Surrogate Hand

LEARN MORE: New insight on the anatomy and architecture of the avian neurocranium

MORE ON SOUTHERN OREGON: Noggin in Grants Pass!

ALL VOLUNTEER: No tuition, no textbooks, no access-denying admission charges, no canned elevator pitches, no institutional, overly professionalized scicomm “certificates.” We love genuine science communication, honest community connections, and creative engagement with the arts. Listening, inspiring, teaching and learning… 🙂