Student volunteers team up with kids, teens for brainy activities

With scalpels and surgical scissors in hand, area high school students nervously laughed and hesitated as they pinched, poked and dissected pig hearts in Benedum Hall, but they couldn’t agree what the innards looked like.

“It looks like a fruit,” one student shouted.

“It looks like a piece of steak,” another said.

The students dug in for the sake of science, learning about the left and right atrium — the chambers of the heart and anatomical directional terms   — as part of Pitt’s Scientists, Engineers and Mathematicians for Service’s programming on Saturday. They joined about 35 local students from grades K-12 who convened on the ground floor of Benedum Hall to spend time with SEMFS members. The student organization — which is funded by the Student Activities Fund, on-campus fundraising and OCC grant money — provides educational science, engineering and math experiences to younger students from public, private and charter schools in the Pittsburgh area throughout the year.

The participating students were split into elementary, middle and high school groups and each took part in three 45-minute age-appropriate activities with a pizza and soda break in between.

SEMFS president Amy Howell, a junior bioengineering major, said the participating students came as part of extracurricular groups. The groups, she said, included students who are from low-income backgrounds, are high-risk or are immigrants, but have high potential or others with general STEM interests.

SEMFS works directly with the schools’ coordinators to fit their events into the schools’ programming and host the programs at Pitt as well as travel to the schools to hold the events. 

Howell said that the club’s events serve to boost morale and build aspirations for younger students. 

“A lot of the students we see have so many voices in their lives telling them that they can’t do things and won’t be successful,” she said. “Our role as college students is to show them that they aren’t so far behind us, and they can be us some day.”

Most of SEMFS’ members are science or engineering majors, according to Zach Barnes, vice president of the club.

One such student is Ryan Spano, a freshman majoring in electrical engineering, who got involved with the club after meeting with some of the group members during the fall activities fair at the Petersen Events Center.

“I liked what it was about because I like science and also working with kids,” said Spano, who also volunteered at the event. “It’s a really rewarding experience, and the fact that even I’m learning new things sometimes is incredible.”

Spano said he thought the event was “extremely beneficial” for the younger students visiting Pitt.

“Here, they can learn things they haven’t even learned at school yet,” Spano said, adding that he gained something from the experience, too. “I get an opportunity to make things and share them with people. Where else can you do that?” Spano said. 

Because the younger students don’t have a collegiate-level scientific understanding, Spano said SEMFS makes the experiments kid-friendly through hands-on activities, “so that they [could] actually see and feel it and have a basic understanding of the science behind it, rather than just hearing about it in a classroom setting.” 

When kids aren’t worried about grades, Spano said, it’s easier for them to enjoy learning. This was true for a sixth grader from Linton Middle School in Penn Hills named Rylee who said that she came because it was a voluntary class field trip and because she knew it was going to be a lot of fun.

“I loved learning about different sounds. We used bottles to see the different types of sound we could hear,” she said, referring to her group’s experience blowing on bottles containing differing amounts of water.

Rylee also participated in an experiment where students were required to extract DNA from a banana, using materials, including bananas, salt, baking soda, detergent, rubbing alcohol, coffee filters, clips, test tubes, forks, bowls and water.

The Pitt volunteers gave an “action plan,” including step-by-step instructions, to the students in smaller groups. They also helped the students gain a deeper understanding by pausing after each step to explain the basic science behind what was happening.

“It was pretty weird at first, but it was cool when we finished,” Rylee said.

During the experiment, one student shouted, “We don’t even have to be in a lab for this!”

Barnes also said the labless event has helped the group partner with other institutions such as Tau Beta Pi, one of Pitt’s honors engineering societies. 

“We’ve been working with them for quite a few weeks and planning with them,” he said. “They got completely integrated into the mix.”

Tenth grader Jason Beck of Ringgold High School in Monongahela, Pa., attended the event because his sister Angela, a Pitt junior and member of Tau Beta Pi, was volunteering.

“I think this is so beneficial for us,” Beck said. “It always helps to work with people who know more than you do. It’s much easier to gain information from others.”

Beck said his favorite activity all day was when Barnes demonstrated the Tesla coil that he built with copper and wood materials in his dorm room during his freshman year. 

“My favorite part was definitely working with electricity and magnetism,” Beck said. “I’ve always had an interest in magnetism and electricity. I don’t know why, it’s just such a fascinating topic.”

Barnes described the Tesla coil as “basically a really big voltage transformer, kind of like how power lines do it,” which creates enough voltage at the top of the coil allows bolts of electricity to shoot off. 

Barnes flicked the switch to turn on the Tesla coil, and students immediately jumped back in surprise at the loud electrical noises emitted from the machine. 

As students watched in awe, Barnes used a fluorescent light bulb as a rod to show that the electricity was attracted to the bulb, but wouldn’t conduct through it so as to shock him. This allowed Barnes to teach some of the basics of electricity, including wiring, current and magnetic induction to the high schoolers. 

Barnes got the inspiration to build the coil from a previous member of SEMFS, who showed him what he could do and told him to “just go out and do it.”

“I realized it was more realistic than I had originally thought,” Barnes said.

After the demonstration, one student cried out, “How did you build it?”

Barnes gave a short and sweet explanation.

“Passion, love for children and duct tape,” he said.