Educational Outreach
The Center has three specific and interrelated goals designed to advance NIAAA's mission of translating and disseminating research findings to health care providers, researchers, policy-makers and the public. These aims also support the Oregon Health & Science University's mission of healing, teaching, research and community service.
K-12 Education & Outreach
The principal goal is to provide K-12th grade students and their teachers with information about alcohol, the brain, and neuroscience. Age-appropriate activities illustrate how the brain works and how alcohol can affect it.
Training in Alcohol Research
PARC scientists provide training and laboratory experience in alcohol research to high school, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students.
Dissemination of Research Findings
We coordinate and share the findings of the Center, and alcohol research results in general, with scientific colleagues and the broader community. Toward this goal, PARC scientists serve as a resource of expertise in the interpretation of scientific advances in alcoholism research.
To work toward these goals, PARC scientists get involved in a number of events in the community each year. Among these are:
- Brain Awareness Season
- National Alcohol Screening Day
- Of Brains and Safety: Neuroscience for K-3
- NIAAA Middle School Curriculum
- Discover OHSU!
- Traveling Neuroscience Fair
Please contact Mark Rutledge-Gorman if you have any questions or comments regarding the aims and projects described on this page.
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Brain Awareness Season
The PARC has been a seminal partner with OHSU in Brain Awareness events since the inception of Brain Awareness Week in Spring 2000. Historically, the PARC has provided funding, organizational support, and personnel for a variety of activities.
The Brain Awareness program is co-sponsored nationally by the Dana Alliance and the Society for Neuroscience. OHSU has been recognized by the SfN as having the largest series of Brain Awareness events in the nation. These events include a public lecture series, a K-12 teachers' workshop, a high school Brain Bowl competition, and a Brain Fair weekend in collaboration with the local Oregon Museum of Science & Industry (OMSI). A summary of Brain Awareness Season events for 2005 may be found at the OHSU Brain Awareness website.
In 2005, the major events in which the PARC was involved included:
Teacher WorkshopThe PARC co-sponsored the university-wide workshop that provides K-12 science and health teachers with NIAAA resources, and answers to questions about alcohol research and teaching alcohol-related topics in the classroom.
Brain Bowl
PARC personnel and students organized and conducted a neuroscience game-show competition for local high school teams. The Portland winner goes on to regional competition.
National Alcohol Screening Day
The PARC has co-sponsored OHSU's participation in National Alcohol Screening Day since 2001. For the second year in a row, the PARC and the OHSU Association of Students for the Underserved collaborated to provide an on-campus screening site. The Association is made up of students from the Schools of Medicine and Nursing. In 2006, 60 people were screened and offered referrals when appropriate. The PARC presented a display on the Center's research and gave away NIAAA publications on a wide range of alcohol-related topics. The next screening day is April 5, 2007.
National Alcohol Screening Day is supported by NIAAA and is organized nationally by Screening for Mental Health, a non-profit organization that also coordinates screening days for anxiety, mood, and eating disorders.
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Of Brains and Safety: Neuroscience for K-3
PARC educators present an age-appropriate, novel two-hour curriculum for children in kindergarten through 3rd grade that links neuroscience and safety. Of Brains and Safety introduces children to the human brain, the nervous system, and the effects of alcohol and drugs of abuse, and promotes ways of keeping their brains safe, especially out-of-doors.
The hands-on curriculum engages young children's powerful thinking processes by focusing on their relative strengths to observe their surroundings, sort and classify what they observe, and then describe what they learned verbally, visually, or kinesthetically. Mark Rutledge-Gorman, PARC Education Director, and Donna Cynkar, a local Kindergarten teacher, developed the novel neuroscience and safety curriculum that has been featured in the science education journal Primary Science Review (2004) 84:17-20. This project was originally conceived for the PARC renewal period (2006-10), but community interest has been so great that we have moved forward with it already. An electronic version of the curriculum is available for download, free to all.
NIAAA Middle School Curriculum
The foundation of this project is NIAAA’s recently published middle school curriculum, "Understanding Alcohol: Investigations into Biology and Behavior". Presentations utilize classroom and web-based activities to examine how the biology of how the body handles and responds to alcohol, from the cellular to behavioral levels. Students take part in an alcohol impairment simulation. To enhance further the usefulness of the curriculum, an Oregon middle school science teacher prepared an introduction for Oregon teachers on how the curriculum can help teachers and students meet the state's science education benchmarks. This program is proving most popular with health and physical education teachers whose classes reach all of a middle school’s students.
DiscoverOHSU!
Science students from area high schools make on-campus visits at OHSU, taking part in several activities at SOM. Our portion is a presentation on the neurogenetics of how the body responds to alcohol and other drugs, and includes a direct-participation alcohol impairment simulation.
Traveling Neuroscience Fair
The Traveling Neuroscience Fair is a traveling neuroscience exhibition aimed at underserved areas of rural and urban Oregon. We present and interpret exhibits that cover diverse topics such as brain anatomy, neuron firing and plasticity, impulsivity, genetics, alcohol impairment, DNA, behavioral testing. We also present the K-3 and Middle School curricula, described above, to students and teachers. The fair increases understanding of how the brain responds to alcohol and other substances, thereby helping people make better choices and avoid harm.
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by Mark Rutledge-Gorman
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