The goal of the Student Ambassador Program was to gather a group of students to promote awareness and engagement within STEM through public outreach events. We worked with our communities and outside of our communities to engage a variety of audiences, including K-12 students, public audiences and families, and students within youth correctional facilities. The five of us each had our own goals of how we would host events and who our target audiences were. We had a variety of methods, including reaching out within our communities, working with clubs that do outreach, reaching out to STEM or Science Nights at schools, and creating our own events in collaboration with schools. Events included many hands-on activities and demos that would inspire creativity, excitement, and curiosity for STEM.
Some key results between the five ambassadors were meaningful, valuable experiences where we could see the
impact we had on the students, as well as potentially creating yearly events with a school as a result of an event. In addition to this, one challenge we found was that there could be hurdles with creating one-off events on our own versus collaborating with already established groups.
Overall, we all enjoyed the experiences and opportunities this program created for us and that we plan to continue with outreach after this program. This program was very rewarding because we got to see the positive experiences we can bring to a variety of audiences and the impacts we can make on them to encourage involvement in STEM.