SEP connects UCSF volunteers with SFUSD teachers and students through classroom-based partnerships, career days, and high school internships. SEP connects UCSF with the broader community via the Bay Area Science Festival.
Teaching
Classroom Partnerships
Elementary, Middle, and High School Programs
SEP matches professional students or graduate, postdoctoral fellows, research scientists, and faculty to plan and co-teach a series of human body, health, or investigative science lessons with SFUSD teachers.
Professional Development
Our Teaching and Mentoring Workshops support UCSF volunteers in developing their teaching and mentoring skills. These workshops cover topics such as strategies for communicating effectively with students from different backgrounds, planning inquiry-based investigative lessons, and assessing student understanding.
Lesson Resources
Lesson Materials
The Daly Ralston Resource Center is a lending library of over 3000 materials to support hands-on health and science lessons. The Resource Center is open to all UCSF employees.
Lesson Ideas
SEPLessons is an online library of lesson plans developed by teachers and scientists in SEP’s partnership programs. SEP program participants can also use its lesson planning tool to facilitate collaboration as they plan lessons together.
Mentorship
Each summer, SEP hosts 20 SFUSD rising seniors in UCSF research labs. Mentors work side-by-side with their intern to guide their learning and completion of an authentic biomedical research project. Mentors are offered support from SEP through monthly meetings, weekly communications, facilitated reflections about their students and mentoring strategies, and a mentor manual outlining program structures, dates, and expectations. Consider mentoring a high school student and making a significant difference in the life of a young person!
For more information, email Lakisha Witzel (lakisha.witzel@ucsf.edu) or click on the link below.
Outreach Opportunities
Volunteer at the Bay Area Science Festival
The Bay Area Science Festival is a 10-day celebration of STEM with events from San Jose to Santa Rosa. Most events are free and many are designed for young people. This festival does for science what other festivals do for film, literature, painting, and music: it engages attention, inspires interest, and fires imagination across entire communities by offering large numbers of activities and events during a short period of time.
If you would like to volunteer during the Science Festival (moving to the Spring of 2022), check back later in the fall for our volunteer sign-up. More info below: