Sarah Westrick
PhD ’20, Psychology
Our overarching goal is to bring science to underprivileged communities in a way that is engaging and interactive for students. By using live animals in our activities, we can engage students of all ages and increase the accessibility of ecology and evolution, an underdeveloped area of curriculum in the K-12 classroom. I propose we develop a Trinidadian guppy population specifically for use in outreach in the fields of evolution, ecology, and neuroethology. Guppies are an ideal system for this project because there are many different activities that can be done to explore different ecological and evolutionary concepts. In their natural environment, guppies exist in a gradient of environments that differ by food-availability and predation risk. Between these populations, we see large differences in morphology, behavior, and color that are easily identified by students of all ages. By using wild guppies in outreach, we can take advantage of these conspicuous differences produced by natural selection to teach evolutionary concepts to students. This project will be initiated in collaboration with MYELIN (Mentoring Youth and Early Leaders in Neuroscience), a student-led organization that serves a local community of underprivileged K-12 students. Partnering with CAN (Community Action Network), a non-profit organization dedicated to serving and providing support to the under-resourced communities located in Ann Arbor, MYELIN brings hands-on science activities to local after-school community centers in efforts to increase science literacy and interest amongst local student populations.
Library Mentors: Angie Oehrli and Karen Downing