June 2018: Last but not least, Shelly from Bee City Canada gave a fascinating talk about bees, pollination, and conservation. The girls learned the bee waddle dance and then went out looking for different species of bees. It was a blast!
May 2018: We had a grab bag of science workshop hosted by David and Melanie. We had so much fun learning about dry ice, light refraction, and so much more!
April 2018: Our awesome volunteer and new Co-Coordinator (now), Lisa, organized a first aid and cpr mini workshop. It got the girls thinking about safety and basic anatomy. It was a fantastic workshop.
March 2018: The Wunch Lab at the University of Toronto graciously hosted the girls in the Atmospheric Chemistry lab. PhD student, Nasrin Pal, led the workshop. We developed hypotheses on where the highest concentrations of CO2 would be found, collected air samples, and then look at our data.
February 2018: We partnered up with STEM Kids Rock for this fantastic workshop on fossils. After Keeley Aird gave a fabulous overview, the girls got to play with clay and re-create or invent a fossil. Our hands certainly got dirty!
November 2017: Our member turned volunteer, Casey, organized and ran the “Physics with LEGO” workshop for the young girls. They built fast cars launching them off ramps, boats that floated, and houses that could withstand a storm. The girls had an absolute blast, incorporating the physics they learned and their creativity.
October 2017: For this CAGIS event the girls had a pre-screening of “Fix and Release” a CBC short-documentary directed by Scott Dobson. The girls learned about turtle conservation from the Turtle Programs Manager at the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre, Donnell Gasbarrini, MSc (also told the girls how she got to her position) and film making from Scott Dobson himself.
September CAGIS Open House at the ROM (2017): For CAGIS’ 25th anniversary five CAGIS Chapters (Toronto, Oakville, London, Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph, and Hamilton) got together at the ROM and had a day filled with fun hands-on activities. We all learned about magnetism, optical illusions, and so much more!
June 24th: At the Ontario BioBlitz, I was taxon lead and led an electrofishing crew in the headwaters of the Rouge watershed. We sampled three different sites, identified the fishes caught, and took tissue samples. It was a super fun day. We even ended up finding a Slimy Sculpin, which hadn’t been seen in 26 years in this part of the watershed. This just goes to show the importance of taxonomic expertise and monitoring through science outreach. Our finding was featured in the news!
June 10th: We met up with Prof. Chelsea Rochman, University of Toronto, who taught the girls about watershed pollution and microplastics. After the fantastic watershed model activity, we participated in a shoreline cleanup, where we learned how to categorize the pollutants and about data collection.
May 27th: The girls drew, categorized, and learned to identify different morphological traits of organism at the Scientific Illustration workshop held at the Royal Ontario Museum. The workshop was designed and run by Viviana Astudillo-Clavijo and Melanie Massey, both graduate students in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Toronto, AND amazing artists. They are inspirational.
May 20th: With Ladies Learning Code, the girls learned storytelling through making their own animations on Scratch. We were so blown away by all the great stories; such imaginations.
May 13th: CAGIS members extracted their own DNA and did BIOart using real pipettes. Thank you GENEius Science for facilitating this workshop.
April 29th: CAGIS Toronto had a parachute making booth at the NASA Space App Youth Program day. We had so much fun making parachutes and launching them!
April 23rd: CAGIS Toronto partnered up with MakerKids. The girls learned how to code their own video game using Scratch. The girls had a blast!
April 22nd: We marched for Science! Fielding (CAGIS volunteer), myself, and Larissa (CAGIS Founder & President) got together to support and speak out for science.
March 13th: I ran a ‘Water quality through ecology” booth for 55 youth interested in discovering Canadian Marine Heritage through Project Coastline. I taught the youth about macroinvertebrates as bioindicators of water quality, invasive species, species at risk, and other ways to test water quality using chemistry.
March 8th: representing the Canadian Association for Girls in Science (CAGIS), I attended the Metamorphosis Girls in STEM Conference at John Polanyi Collegiate Institute, where I met lots of enthusiastic girls interested in STEM. I had lots of fun discussions.
February 24th: I visited Dr. Frank J. Hayden Secondary School to give a lecture entitled “Canadian aquatic ecosystems & impacts on human health” to a gr.11 Environmental Science class. We had a great discussion about Canadian marine and freshwater heritage and impacts of humans on these ecosystems. The talk was facilitated through Project Coastline.
Rowshyra Castañeda, PhD 