Reach for the Stars at the Sally Ride Festival
Santa Clara University will host the Sally Ride Science Festival on April 1. With colorful displays, energetic music, and hands-on activities, the festival aims to bring 1,000 or more fifth- to eighth-grade girls (and boys) to SCU for a fun, enlightening celebration of science. Sally Ride is best known as being America’s first woman in space.
“Our vision is to encourage girls—and boys—and to support them in a passion they already have,” says Bear Ride, Sally Ride’s sister and the “intergalactic” field organizer for the Sally Ride festivals. “We want to capture in cool, fun ways the innate curiosity kids already have in science.”
And who wouldn’t want to take part in fun workshops where you get to actively participate? Alluring titles from previous festivals such as “Create Your Own Alien,” “Capturing Whispers from Space,” “Never Buy Cheese out of Someone’s Trunk,” “Phun with Physics,” “Talk by Lightning,” “Tech-Jep: An Engineering Approach to Jeopardy!” and “Extracting DNA from a Strawberry” can make choosing which workshop they want to participate in a problem for many of the kids.
SCU organizer Dan Lewis, associate professor in computer engineering, is already recruiting dozens of faculty, staff, students, and community members to put the Santa Clara spin on the event. Possible workshop topics include computer forensics, the physics of dance, sleep research, and robotics. “We’re looking forward to getting middle school students excited about math and science education,” he says.
To register, visit the festival’s Web site. An $18 registration fee covers lunch and materials. Scholarships are also available.
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