What a year!
We pioneered both online and hybrid outreach models, traveled the globe (virtually!) with our noteworthy noggins and cerebral art, taught close to 1000 engaged and accomplished undergraduates and helped launch a brand new Interdisciplinary Neuroscience minor at Portland State University!
LEARN MORE: STEAM Ahead: A new interdisciplinary neuroscience minor at Portland State!
LEARN MORE: Interdisciplinary neuroscience minor courses and requirements
LEARN MORE: Hosford, Hippocampi & Hope
SfN 2021 CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO: CHECK OUT OUR NEW 2021 ABSTRACT
LEARN MORE: Northwest Noggin @ Society for Neuroscience
Yet when spring term ended I hit the road with my husband, two rescue shepherds and a tent, while our boys boarded some awesome Amtrak trains.
We met in the U.S. midwest and northeast to visit with family and friends, and catch up after more than a year of pandemic separation.
We traveled 7500+ mostly non-freeway miles through 21 states, from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine – and back! We included an extended stay in Chicago, Illinois, the site of this year’s upcoming Society for Neuroscience conference.
I had the distinct honor of re-connecting with Yuri Sugano at the University of Chicago for an exciting day of brain dissection. I also hugely enjoyed lunch with Cassidy Wilson, the President of the UChicago Neuroscience Club! Both Cassie and Yuri had joined us virtually for outreach in Portland and Astoria public schools, and we’re now busy planning new live visits to Chicago Public School classrooms during SfN this fall!
LEARN MORE: Noggins in CHICAGO!
LEARN MORE: Reflections on Chicago
LEARN MORE: Lakeside sits a ship
DISCOVER RESEARCH THAT YURI CONTRIBUTED TO: The bystander effect in rats
We love Chicago!
I returned to the road grateful for more essential specimens for K-12 and community outreach.
I also crafted a new pipe cleaner coronavirus, and regularly carried it, along with colorful 3D printed brains, into towns and cities across the United States. This offered so many wonderful opportunities to have impromptu discussions about viruses, biology, public policy and neuroscience research!
LEARN MORE: 99.2% of US Covid deaths in June were unvaccinated
MAKE YOUR OWN CORONAVIRUS: Crafting Coronavirus
There’s definitely something novel and intriguing about encountering a big, intentionally crafted model coronavirus, or a human brain (even a 3D printed one) that motivates and engages people, and gets them curious and talking and willing to share their own stories and connect.
Our brains are more “plastic” and changeable in these moments too.
LEARN MORE: The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation
After a brewery patron in Johnson Lake, Nebraska, asked how we could “put up with all the COVID restrictions” in the Pacific Northwest, I posted some colorful graphics from our cross-country adventure highlighting state statistics on coronavirus cases, deaths and vaccination rates.
Personally I’m very grateful for Oregon’s evidence-based approach!
Cross Country COVID
Brains made it successfully!
Now ready for summer and fall terms!
