Several groups of high school students participated in an education project this past summer sponsored by USDA’s Women and Minorities Grant Program. The purpose of this project is to increase awareness and preparation of women and minority students for careers in the new biomaterials fields. We are creating informative recruiting materials to attract women and minority students to biomaterials undergraduate programs and are developing SBIOCAMP, a model for a weeklong summer camp that highlights the new discipline of biomaterials science.

Approximately 64 students helped us develop and test run five activities: (1) Nothing, Nails, and Glue, which tests the load-sharing capacity and stiffness of wood beams; (2) Writing With Wood, which is the extraction of fluorophores from wood that were then used to produce invisible ink; (3) Biomass Turns Into a Paper Chia Pet, which uses a wood pulp slurry enhanced with biodegradable glitter and chia seeds to make paper hand sheets that can then be planted in soil to grow chia plants; (4) Parallel or Perpendicular?laminated and cross-laminated 6” x 6” sheets of plywood; and (5) Wood Straws, which tests the impact of the direction of plant cells on water flow through and across a test sample. Activity sheets with background information, instructions, and applications of the knowledge gained to solve problems were prepared for each of the five activities. An evaluation feedback survey was completed by the camp participants. A weeklong SBIOCAMP will be offered summer 2019.