Happy end of the semester, everyone!
I’ve been away these last few months catching up on work and my life, but I’m back and so excited to share some of the wonderful outreach and education events I’ve helped organize/participate in recently.
One of the main conferences for my field (biological anthropology) is the annual conference for the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA).
(The name of our organization is not reflective of the kinds of work we do, so there’s been a movement recently towards changing the name to the American Association of Biological Anthropologists. If you’re curious about this, you can read more here.)
This year, the AAPAs took place in Cleveland, Ohio, just a short drive from State College (yay for saving on travel and time!).
This year at the AAPAs, I co-organized a workshop on education and outreach within biological anthropology called “Teaching Bio Anth Within and Without a Classroom”. This means I got together with some badass #scientistas and ran a poster session where scientists and educators within our field could present their fantastic work, ranging from teaching primatology to middle-schoolers to running a pedagogy-focused group for graduate students.
This poster session was organized by the Committee on Diversity’s Anthropologists outside of Anthropology departments, Contingent, and Teaching-focused faculty (AACT) Task Force and the AAPA Education Committee.
The chair for our session was Dr. Jessica Westin, with co-organizers Becca Peixotto, Molly Selba, and myself! We also had a discussant for our session, the wonderful Dr. Briana Pobiner.
The poster session was on Thursday, March 28, 2019 and ran from 2:30pm-6:00pm (definitely one of the longestttttttttt poster sessions I’ve ever, ever presented in, but worth it!)
I presented on the amazing work done by the Anthropology Graduate Student Association: Outreach Committee at Penn State, of which I am founding member and currently still actively involved in. Y’all have seen my many Twitter posts about the fun activities we plan and the many wonderful children we get to interact with regularly. Here’s a snippet of one of our activities from just this week!
Our committee has also been recognized during our department’s annual Anthropology Day for the connections and impact we have made in the local community. It was only fitting that we presented our work during the AAPAs! Below is our poster:
We had 19 brilliant posters presented in our session. Not only so, there was SO much interest in presenting that there was an additional Education poster session later on during the conference!
If you’re interested in seeing some of the wonderful outreach and education work presented during both sessions, do not fret! I have provided the posters below so you, too, can be inspired to run similar initiatives or think of your own within your department, school, college, university, or local community.
In addition to this poster session, the AAPA Education Committee also tabled at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History during each day of the conference! Here are some of the highlights from Twitter:
I hope this post and the various posters, resources, and activities show just how important outreach and education are and the MANY ways you can do it, too!
As always, feel free to reach out with comments, questions, and concerns. Until next time, friends.
Maggie
