The BIU is committed to outreach and engagement with audiences of all ages. Many of us were lucky enough to have been given magnifying glasses or very basic microscopes as children and the fascination with the hidden world never leaves.
Tours and Virtual Tours.
We host regular visits from 6th form colleges for combined tours of the BIU and of the Hospital's Histology laboratories, where they see the journey of a patent biopsy from arrival in a pot of fixative through to scanned microscope slide that the consultants diagnose from.
We can also live-stream BIU tours and microscope sessions for groups who are unable to visit in person and have created a virtual tour of the BIU to let anyone meet our staff and hear about our microscopes.
Open Days and Science Events.
We regularly participate in the annual University Science and Engineering Festifal (SOTSEF), taking some of our smaller microscopes over to main campus for you to use. We also attend other outreach events including the New Forest Show and participate in Pint of Science - an annual series of science talks held in local pubs.
"Thanks very much for the great hands on exhibits and your very friendly staff."
"**** had a fantastic time at your stand and many others. A huge joy as he hasn’t been able to access classroom learning at school for 6 months due to high anxiety and sensory overwhelm linked with being on the autistic spectrum. This day has inspired him and reassured him that he is still interested and can still learn on his own agenda - he’d worried that he’d completely lost the ability to learn. We’re pushing for specialist secondary autism schooling from September ...."
School Activities
We take microscopes out to local schools for hands-on sessions with large screen display from the microscope camera feed so everyone in the class can join in.
In collaboration with Gemma Hortop, head of Science at Hownsdown School , we have developed a range of forensic imaging activities which can be undertaken at key stage 3 and which foster enquiry, investigation, observation, data gathering, analysis and teamwork to solve a crime. One of these, "Hospital Heist" has been adapted by University interns to create online resources that allow teachers to run the activity in their own school. At Hownsdown, we take the entire year group out of class for a day during National Science Week to run the event, with pupils rotating around all the activities and finishing with case conferences where each small group must collate their findings into a poster and then present this to their classmates, with prizes for the best teamwork and deduction. Over 3000 activity packs for Hospital Heist have been distributed by the University's School- University Partnership team
We also host work experience school and college students, and undergraduates on paid, sandwich year placements.