Past and Current Projects by BIRD Interns

Coloring Book Study Guides

Remi Castellanos, 2024-2025 BIRD Intern

The Coloring Book Study Guides are resources for bio and non bio majors. It is an additional resource for people to turn to when studying and building an introductory level knowledge base or simply engaging their curiosity in different subjects in biology. The guides are designed without jargon and added interactive components and guided reflection or note areas to help students learn studying habits and tactics.

Biology Student Lounge

Isabella Jupiter, 2024-2025 BIRD Intern

Isabella’s project built on a previous BIRD project that established the biology student lounge at Reed (room B101). Her project investigated the impact of a student dedicated space on collaboration and community, which culminated in the establishment of interactive displays that could showcase student voices, department events, advertise resources, and collect feedback. The vision for this project was to transform the student lounge to make the space more inviting to students and to help connect students who use the space with each other and with the department overall.

Establishment of Reed’s oSTEM chapter

Alister Orozco, 2023-2024 BIRD Intern

Alister Orozco established a student group and developed community programming to help queer/transgender STEM students at Reed College network with queer and trans scientists outside of Reed. Alister started a local chapter of Out in STEM (oSTEM) at Reed and, as a student group, has organized regular community events such as movie nights, headshot sessions, and drop-in advising. Alister also organized and applied for grants to send Reed students to the 2023 national oSTEM conference. He invited Jae Corning to speak at the biology seminar series about research on the accessibility of trans health care in the US. Alister organized a “What’s it like to be Out in STEM? A career panel,” consisting of 8 speakers from different areas of STEM (industry, academia, and PhD students) who all identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community to serve as a resource to students. To create community within Reed, Alister is also renovating the Pride Center, a physical resource space for queer students.

BioZine

Ram Nordahl, 2023-2024 BIRD Intern

Ram Nordahl developed a bi-annual zine to highlight student perspectives within the Biology department, particularly those from historically underrepresented backgrounds and marginalized groups. The zine collected submissions for the first half of each semester and then compiled submissions to release the zine college-wide.

See digital pages from the Fall and Spring BioZine editions.