What we do

SCIENCE class is a partnership between STEM PhD students at UC San Diego, CREATE at UCSD, and the San Diego county sheriff’s department.  Through this program, each quarter a group of our STEM PhD student volunteers prepares and teaches a series of lessons on a scientific theme in East Mesa Re-entry Facility (men) and Las Colinas Detention and Re-Entry Facility (women), two facilities run by the sheriff’s department. 

Classes emphasize hands-on activities, relating science to everyday life, and scientific thinking. One of the goals of this program is to bring science and scientists to those who generally have less access to them and to empower everyone to be a scientist and engaged in science.

To us, science belongs to everyone, and it’s important to us to make that a reality.

Mission

Our mission is to facilitate a scientific knowledge exchange between graduate students at UCSD and incarcerated adults in San Diego County and to empower everyone to be a scientist and engaged in science. Classes emphasize hands-on activities, active learning, relating science to everyday life, and scientific thinking.

Vision

We aim to help our incarcerated students develop science literacy, comfort, and confidence, as well as to empower them to see how science connects to their lived experiences, how they can use science in their lives, and how science can connect to the real world.  We create an engaging and fun classroom environment, and give students a creative outlet while incarcerated while also showing them how science can be an outlet for creativity.  We also aim to foster curiosity and an understanding of scientists as regular people.  We promote continuing education upon release, and are working with community partners to create a pipeline from incarceration to higher education.  We also see ripple effects from our students’ interactions with science in our class into their families and communities.

We also aim to develop equity-minded instructors who can teach and learn with students from many different backgrounds, and challenge instructors to be creative in finding ways to connect science to the real world.