The BIU is committed to outreach to, and engagement with, audiences of all ages. Many of us were lucky enough to have been given magnifying glasses or toy microscopes as children and the fascination with the hidden world never leaves.
Tours.
We host regular visits from 6th form colleges for combined tours of the unit and of the Hospital's pathology unit, where they see the process a patent biopsy goes through from arrival in a pot of fixative through to microscope slide on the consultant's microscope.
We have also live-streamed tours for groups who could not attend during the COVID-19 pandemic and 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 Hospital open days, where we open our doors to visitors to let them see our microscopes in action, sometimes we let you drive them! We also attend 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, events at the Winchester Centre and other venues. Several staff members have also given talks for Pint of Science - a nationwide 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
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 it in their own schools. 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 1500 activity packs for Hospital Heist have been distributed by the University's School- University Partnership team
We also host work experience students from school and undergaduates on sandwich year placements.