June Volunteer of the Month: Moriah Beck

Written by Peggy Ni - YSP Volunteer

Dr. Moriah Beck, who was the Student Director of YSP from 2004 to 2006, recently came back to Washington University for a visit and took some time to talk about her continued commitment to science outreach as well as give us some interesting insight on what YSP was like when she was here and her perception of it now. 

Moriah's previous experience with YSP was certainly extensive; before becoming Student Director, she first participated in the Chemistry Teaching Team, then moved on to co-coordinating Summer Focus in her second year, and along the way became involved in volunteering with what is now known as the TRP program.  After graduating from Washington University in 2007, Moriah went on to become a post-doc at the University of North Carolina.  She then moved to her current position, a faculty member in the Chemistry Department at Wichita State University in Kansas, and in fact has just finished her first year there.  Though Moriah cautions that it is hard to gauge direct cause and effect, she does believe that YSP has influenced her career path.  For instance, she became more interested in teaching after YSP, and her current job actually involves a lot of that as she spends about 50% of her time teaching and 50% doing research.  Additionally, she feels that she seeks science outreach more as a result of her experience with YSP.  Activities she was or is involved with include judging for "DNA Day" at North Carolina as well as writing forensic science tasks for the Science Olympiad tournament, a team-based competition for students, at Wichita.

Comparison of the current YSP with what Moriah was a part of roughly 5 years ago reveals a few distinct changes.  For instance, Moriah notes that there are more writing courses now, which is balanced by fewer journal clubs and scientist talks for Summer Focus.  And, there appears to be more involvement of the students' families, with a great example being the implementation of the Family Science Experience.

Having been deeply involved with YSP in the past and has since gained different science outreach experiences after leaving St. Louis, Moriah is at a unique position now to offer insight on what YSP does well and how it can grow.  The fact that YSP was initiated and is run by students is often spoken of, and Moriah agrees that based on what she has seen, this is indeed exceptional to not have a department or outreach group running and funding YSP but instead rely on hard-working and dedicated students.  This could be due to the location from which YSP operates; Moriah feels that there is a unique need for YSP in St. Louis due to the location of Washington University in the midst of the city and in close proximity to students in the city's public high school system.  Additionally, she praises the TRP program as being rare.  Not many other places have this opportunity for high school science teachers to work and learn in a university lab.  Moving forward, Moriah would like to see one thing YSP try to do that she believes would best benefit the community.  "We talked about somehow getting other schools to adopt this model and maybe identifying schools that have similar needs and student populations and somehow marketing YSP to them to see if they could start a branch," she says.  Moriah is unsure how feasible this endeavor would be, but the positive effect such an organization would have on both the volunteers and students seems to make the effort worth it.