Science Workshops

Regional project aims to spark interest in the sciences

By Taylor McClure
Townships’ Daily News Bits

CIDI 99.1 FM

Schools across the Eastern Townships will have the opportunity to take part in science workshops for the 2022-2023 school year thanks to the Inspecteur Génético project. The project was initiative by Dr. Estelle Chamoux of the Biology Department at Bishop’s University (B.U.) back in 2019. Following the pandemic, Chamoux wanted to expand the project and get more schools involved. The Inspecteur Génético project received $58, 240 in funding from the Ministry of Economy and Innovation with the aim to spark interest in scientific careers.

“It was a part of a project from the National Institute for Engineering and Science (originally). They wanted us to create initiatives in schools. So, I created two little workshops and gave them in elementary and high schools in the region. The workshops were very well received. (…) I wanted to go on and improve the experience, then the pandemic hit,” explained Chamoux.

Now that Quebec has lightened up its restrictions, the project is back in full swing.

“I’m very happy to give a rebirth to the whole project. We will now give five different workshops adapted to the levels of students,” said Chamoux.

These five workshops will be available to elementary schools and high schools across the Eastern Townships region, including Brome-Missisquoi. The workshops will ask students to serve as investigators that have to solve a scientific problem.

“The idea is to introduce science in a fun and engaging way. For instance, for elementary school students I have little models of 3D cells and the game is that each cell is not working properly. So, every good group of students will have to play the “doctor” for the cells and they will have to find what is not working and they will have to fix the cell,” mentioned Chamoux.

There are “science animators’ who will be overseeing the workshops who are studying in Biology at B.U. and former B.U. students who have gone on to pursue their Masters degree at the Université de Sherbrooke in the Faculty of Medicine.

“They are perfectly bilingual and they can give the workshops in both French and English. We also have some more complex workshops for the high school students. We have workshops where they have to map a gene in a chromosome. (…) They do the exact same type of techniques that we use in a real lab,” noted Chamoux.

Chamoux hopes that students will recognize the fun in science and that it has a significant propose. “Sometimes you study science, but you don’t really know what it will give you in the end, you don’t really know what it’s going to be useful for. Here with that, we start with real problems, a real concrete example, and then we use the science to solve it,” she said.

When the Ministry of Economy and Innovation launched the call for projects, it was meant to spark an interest in scientific careers.

“Specifically, in the Eastern Townships, we have a lot of innovation centres, a lot of research centres, and very few students know that there are opportunity here and very few students know that they can be a part of it. (…) The idea behind the project is not just to educate science and to spark interest for science, it’s also to say ‘yeah you can also become a scientist and you can also have a great career opportunity in science as a researcher, a research technician, as a research professional,” emphasized Chamoux.

Following the workshops, students that are interested can do a follow-up with those involved in the Inspecteur Génético project for support in pursuing their interests in the sciences.

“It can be a visit to a lab, researcher experience, it can be a science fair project they want to develop, and we will accompany them. We won’t just give the workshop and leave,” noted Chamoux.

Teachers and schools within the Eastern Townships interested in signing up for the workshops will be able to register directly on the Inspecteur Génético project website.