The UC Center for Public Engagement with Science organizes field trips of area public schools to visit the University of Cincinnati. The goal is to give middle-school students, typically 5th or 6th grade, an experience of being “insiders” on a local college campus.
Friday, April 24, we hosted 80 5th graders from Miller Ridge Elementary in Middletown, Ohio. These classes were especially interested to learn more about sensory biology, so they spent their morning in the UC Biology Department.
Students visited Dr. Nate Morehouse’s lab to learn more about variation in color vision across species. Students were challenged to sort M&Ms by color while wearing red or blue goggles. In Dr. Josh Gross’s lab, students engaged with a variety of visual and auditory illusions to learn how sensation changes with circumstances. One of the activities was tasting a lime before and after eating a miracle berry, which blocks the sensation of tartness. Students also visited the UC Biology greenhouses, learning about the variety of plants kept in different conditions and sharing their knowledge about plants and growing conditions.
We rounded out the field trip with a pizza lunch and a visit from the Bearcat! Then students enjoyed a walk around campus before departing on their buses.
You can learn more about our field trips from this earlier news segment on Fox19: https://www.fox19.com/2025/02/18/kids-learn-about-science-engineering-majors-uc/.
Every year, PEWS expands the number of field trips to UC it organizes. If you are a teacher and want to explore bringing your students to UC, email us at engagingscience@uc.edu to learn more. If your UC department might be interested to have 5th or 6th grade students visit, please also reach out to us at the same address.