Building Bridges—Remotely

The Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships offers Bridge-Builder Awards (formerly Service/Research Awards) to student groups that devise projects that integrate community service and research.  Many of these projects involve providing volunteer service at public and non-profit institutions in the Boston area; the groups draw on the research literature in shaping their approach to their work, and groups also conduct informal research to assess the efficacy of their work. 

Since mid-March, our Bridge-Builder groups have not been able to visit their usual volunteer sites because of the COVID-19 epidemic.  However, several of them have made resources available online that may be useful to members of the community as they cope with the closure of schools and other key institutions.  For parents and guardians of children home from school, our Bridge-Builder students can offer several ideas for engaging science and music lessons that can be undertaken without access to special equipment.  And for caregivers of elders facing memory issues, our students can offer crafting projects that are designed with such elders in mind and can be done with everyday materials. 

Science Lessons 

The Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships is fortunate to support several Bridge-Builder groups that focus on developing educational workshops for kids and adolescents on topics related to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.  STEMVentures is one such group.  Two of the group’s leaders, Cory Langenbach and Anjali Kokra, have put together a guide containing several science lesson ideas for the parents and guardians of younger children.  These lessons offer hands-on opportunities for children to learn about concepts relevant to fields like civil engineering, chemistry, and physics while having fun. 

Music Lessons 

Roxbury Rocks, a longstanding Bridge-Builder group focused on music education for children, wrapped up its operations in 2019.  Before doing so, its members put together a website containing outlines of several of their lessons. The purpose of these lessons, a number of which can be done without access to musical instruments, is to introduce young children to musical concepts and to use music as a vehicle to help kids understand and articulate their emotions.   

Crafting Projects 

Caring Crafts is a Bridge-Builder group that primarily focuses on designing and holding crafting workshops for elders with memory issues.  The group has prepared several videos that demonstrate how to make particular crafts using everyday objects; watch and learn as Caring Crafts members share how to make wreaths out of coffee filters, flowers out of pasta, and a raincloud out of a paper plate.