{"id":41600,"date":"2016-03-01T10:11:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T20:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=41600"},"modified":"2018-11-28T13:01:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T23:01:53","slug":"getting-up-close-with-science-at-gene-ius-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2016\/03\/01\/getting-up-close-with-science-at-gene-ius-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting up-close with science at Gene-ius Day"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Since 2006, more than five thousand Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> schoolchildren have gotten up-close with science at Gene-ius Day<\/a>, a program developed by professor Ania Wieczorek<\/strong><\/a> of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources<\/a> (CTAHR<\/abbr>) at the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Gene-ius Day is basically a science program for students in the elementary and middle school with an emphasis on the importance of agriculture and genetics in our lives,” said Wieczorek. Students are taught with a hands-on approach. “We want them to come to UH<\/abbr> and see how wonderful UH<\/abbr> is, and give them, kind of a sign that, if they study hard at school, they can come to UH<\/abbr> and be part of our ʻohana<\/span>,” explained Wieczorek.<\/p>\n

Faculty and staff at CTAHR<\/abbr> prepare simple experiments designed to engage and excite young minds. On this day, they were extracting DNA<\/abbr> from a substance they were all familiar with—papaya. After mashing papaya fruit, they added cold ethanol, and, voila, DNA<\/abbr>!<\/p>\n

“I’ve had a chance to play around with microscopes, but the microscopes they use here is a new one to me, and it looks more advanced,” said Broderick Chester, an Aikahi Elementary 4th grader. “The thing I liked best was getting to use the special chemical and putting it with the papaya juice to make the DNA<\/abbr> gel.”<\/p>\n

For Wieczorek, watching the children get excited about science is what it’s all about. “The ‘Wow!’ moment—it’s priceless. You know, for me, I wake up every morning and I hope that today is going to be a day that the kids are going to have Wow! moment, and we actually, every time that we run the program, we have a few kids who have that unbelievable wow moment. And when the kids come and tell me, ‘now, I want to be a scientist,’ I know I have been successful.”<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than five thousand UH<\/abbr> schoolchildren get hands-on with science at “Gene-ius Day” at UH<\/abbr> Mānoa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12],"tags":[222,212,9,56],"class_list":["post-41600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-video","tag-agriculture","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41600"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87909,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600\/revisions\/87909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}