Widening Participation and Outreach News January/ February 2016 Welcome to the RVC Access Department’s Widening Participation newsletter. This is for teachers, RVC staff and students to find out about recent activities and how to get involved!
New projects- January 2016
Baby T Rex project! Structure and Motion Lab & City of London Academy Year 8 pupils at City of London Academy, Southwark, recently enjoyed the chance to construct dinosaur models which were the actual size of baby T-Rexes! They first visited our Camden campus to draw anatomy, and make plaster of paris bones based on chicken bones. Following that, we went to City of London academy for the construction phase involving Modroc, wire, card, tissue paper and even 3D printed T rex skulls. You will be able to find out more about this project at our public event Night at the Vet College on March 17th, and it links to Professor John Hutchinson’s recent TV work ‘Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur’ which has been on BBC this month. This project bridged art and science and aimed to inspire young people through meeting science researchers and students. We will be using aspects of this activity in our Summer Schools. With thanks to Professor John Hutchinson, teacher Ben Frimnet, Dr Lauren Summer-Rooney, Dr Vivien Allen, Dr Andrew Cuff, student ambassadors Emily Turgoose and Annika Hall, and Andrew Crook.
Bento-Bio: ‘Is it horse meat?!’ Activity with Regent’s High School Year 12 students at Regent’s High School visited our Camden Campus with Science and Technology subject leader Alex Scoullos, to help advise about prototypes of an exciting new piece of science equipment developed by researchers Bethan Wolfenden and Philipp Boeing called Bento Lab. It includes a PCR machine, centrifuge and gel electrophoresis capability, but is desktop sized with the aim of facilitating more people to be able to carry out experiments. Pupils were given a scenario: they had to test supermarket meat samples to establish which species the meat originated from! Through visiting RVC pupils reinforced their understanding of DNA identification techniques on their syllabus, and they will also be able to come back in and see the outcome of their feedback. Thanks to Alex Scoullos, Bethan Wolfenden, student ambassdors Rachel Andrews, Lizzie Pengelly; and Andrew Crook.