Cool Science Volunteer Information

** If you haven't done so already, please complete our Volunteer Questionaire **

Welcome to Cool Science

Our goal is simple: to make science more fun and less intimidating, not just for kids, but for parents, teachers and everyone. We are a passionate and enthusiastic group of volunteers led by real scientists, engineers and educators from local companies, schools and universities who enjoy sharing our interest in science, technology, engineering and math (that's the STEM acronym we use a lot). Cool Science was founded about 8 years ago by an Intel engineer named Jennifer Rivers, who is still a member of our Board of Directors, but on a sabbatical of sorts as a new mom. You can find out more on the "About Us" page.

We offer a variety of programs, mostly to elementary and middle schools, but also to home school groups, scout troops, the local museums and zoo, and just about and place or event where you'll find lots of kids. These include basic science demonstrations or "magic" shows, simple directed hands-on activities (mini workshops), full science or engineering design workshops and experiments, and science activity tables. Our big signature event is the "Day of Science", where we literally take over an entire school (usually an elementary school) for the whole day, performing 3 or 4 different shows (or sometimes mini-workshops), and setting up 2 or 3 rooms with several hands-on activity stations that kids can explore mostly on their own (mini versions of our science activity tables). We also do a full-day "Mini Day of Science", where we do just one of the shows (or rotations) from a Day of Science, repeating it for each of the grade levels.

If you attended our recent Cool Science at UCCS, most of what you saw were examples of our science activity tables. While we do have (or can borrow) some pretty cool store-bought equipment, most of what we do requires nothing more than fairly common household items (balloons, pop bottles, aluminum cans, etc.) so that kids and parents can do the same activities and experiments at home and appreciate the amazing science all around us. It's also cheaper, as we're a very low-budget operation.

We have a variety of opportunites for you to volunteer. Of course the obvious ones are developing, demonstrating and explaining the science behind our activities to kids, so a background in science or engineering is helpful, but if you're interested in learning we're happy to show you all you'll need to get started and perhaps spur your own interest to dig deeper. We also have lots of other needs, including help in planning and organizing our events, expanding our website and other social media outlets, writing newsletters, finding and writing grant applications, designing and building our "toys", and photographing our programs and events. If any of this sounds interesting, or you have your own ideas of how you can help us share science fun with kids, just send an email to Marc.

The Google Calendar below lists all our upcoming events with brief descriptions (you can also see what we've done in past years). If you need more details on any of these programs, or would like to join the fun, just call or email any of us- we'd love to have you!

Upcoming Programs/Events (contact Marc or Carol below to sign up for any of these):

(Note: You can add any of these events to your personal Google Calendar)