Dates

November 26 and December 3

Available for

Available for Arts and Culture SHSM and Music classes

Description

Take a guided tour of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock’s downtown arts campus. Enjoy a provided lunch followed by a student concert next door at the First Ontario Performing Arts Centre.

Schedule

Dates

November 23, and December 9, 11 and 13

Available for

Available for Arts and Culture SHSM and Visual Arts classes

Description

Line Quality and Spatial Illusion

This drawing workshop will introduce students to the importance of sighting, measuring, and the use of sensitive line quality to create an illusion of space in their drawings. Students will participate in hands-on drawing activities that will build their observational skills and confidence in capturing the illusion of three-dimensional space in their drawings.

Schedule

Date

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Available for

Grade 10, 11 and 12 classes

Session Information

FUTURES

Session 1: Child and Youth Studies
Understanding Children & Youth: “Nothing about us, without us!”

What is a child? And, why does childhood matter? In this session, we discuss the science of childhood and how it is made possible by the social and cultural world. Using multimedia examples, we will discuss how children are using their voices to mobilize change, challenge conventional ideas (about race, disability, technology and other issues) and deepen our understandings of the future of childhood.

Presenter(s): John McNamara and Chelsea Jones

Session 2: Women’s and Gender Studies
Issues in Women’s and Gender Studies: Indigenous Feminist and Queer/Trans Perspectives on Gendered Violence

Explore why trans & queer lives are now up for debate everywhere from the US presidential election, to provincial politics and local school boards in Canada. How does this media, political and legislative violence impact the everyday realities of queer and trans people, and how are we fighting back?

The Anishinaabe Peoples embrace the concept Seven Forward Seven Back. Feminisms will be explored through this lens; alongside, the emergence of art, activism, and other-than human relations as it pertains to Indigenous Feminisms.

Presenter(s): Margot Francis and Lyn Trudeau

INTERACTIONS

Session 1: Labour Studies
Do you know your rights at work?

Every employee has the right to be treated fairly at work, but some employers violate the rights of employees more often than you might think. This session is focused on learning about workers’ rights and how you can go about strengthening and enforcing them.

Presenter(s): Jordan House and Paul Gray

Session 2: Psychology
Unraveling the Psychology of Everyday Life

What are the underlying psychological mechanisms behind our day-to-day decision-making and interpersonal interactions? In this session, we will examine subtle yet powerful influence and persuasion tactics that play out in our daily interactions. Furthermore, we will delve into the darker side of humanity, exploring topics such as cognitive biases, prejudice, and aggression.

Presenter(s): Will Hall

MEDIA

Session 1: Communication, Popular Culture and Film (CPCF)
Featured for You: Understanding Netflix with CPCF

Did Netflix change television? Will Netflix and other video-on-demand services contribute to the end of movie-going? How do the “recommended for you” algorithms work and how do they shape our consumption of media and our engagement with culture? In this session, we will explore how learners could engage streaming media by analyzing content, and also by critically exploring algorithms and the increasing platformization of media industries.

Presenter(s): Karen Smith and Peter Lester

Session 2: Political Science
Baldur’s Gate 3…and Politics?

The popular video game Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, but gaming isn’t just for fun — role-playing simulations also help us to understand the world of politics. Come play a brief simulation with us, The Starship Game, to see how political scientists use games to understand elections, justice, and war and peace. Hopefully Orin the Red doesn’t show up while we’re playing…but we can’t promise she won’t.

Presenter(s): Stefan Dolgert

ADVOCACY

Session 1: Sociology
Introducing Critical Animal Studies: Law, Social Justice, and Environmental Policy

Orcas recently gripped the public imagination as they attacked boats and even sank a few. Were they just playing or were they animal vigilantes, rebelling against centuries of ocean plunder and environmental destruction? The field of Critical Animal Studies is a multidisciplinary area that explores questions about human and nonhuman animal relationships. In this presentation, you will learn about ground-breaking developments in animal law, animal protection, ethology (animal behaviour), ecology, and social justice advocacy.

Presenter(s): Lauren Corman

Session 2: Applied Disability Studies
Why Inclusion Matters

The Department of Applied Disability Studies invites you to explore the subject areas we cover and how they might lead you to a variety of careers working with and for people with differing abilities. Join us as we guide you through several fun and interactive info stations, including immersive virtual reality and 2D games, where we show you what it’s like to navigate the world in different ways.

Presenter(s): Nicole Luke and Luke Lab student members

SOLUTIONS

Session 1: Geography and Tourism Studies
Mapping with open-source GIS

Maps are one way geographers identify geographical patterns, such as global warming or the spread of COVID-19. Identifying geographical patterns allows us to investigate and solve real-world problems. In this guided activity, we will make a map using QGIS, a popular and free open-source software for analyzing spatial data. Access to a computer will be provided.

Presenter(s): Jeff Boggs

Session 2: Economics
How Economics Can Save the World

Students will be introduced to some key economics concepts and learn how to think like economists. Together we’ll apply this thinking to some problems that students might not think of when they hear “economics”—tackling climate change, curbing bad behaviour, or helping people get new kidneys!

Presenter(s): Taylor Wright

BEHAVIOUR

Session 1: Applied Linguistics
Communication Sciences & Disorders – A Crash Course!

See how language is represented in the brain and discover the impact of a stroke on language as you check out the aphasia test battery! Practice using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to transcribe your name onto a nametag to take home. Learn about early language acquisition – from babbling to sentences. Listen to our audio clips and make a timeline of the major early language milestones. All this and more in our interactive crash course – led by students, for students!

Presenter(s): Hillary Ganek

Session 2: Forensic Psychology and Criminal Justice
What is a Psychopath?

Everyone has an idea of what the word “psychopath” means. Come and find out what research has to say about psychopaths and the effect they have on the people around them.

Presenter(s): Angela Book

Date

Friday, December 6, 2024

Available for

Agriculture SHSM, Food Processing SHSM, and Chemistry and Biology classes

Session Information

GRAPE AND WINE SCIENCE

Have you ever thought about a career in the exciting grape and wine industry? Brock University is in the heart of Niagara’s wine country and boasts a 96% job placement rate for graduates from Canada’s only grape and wine undergraduate program called Applied Grape and Wine Science. Come experience first-hand how we chemically measure acids and sugars in juice before it is turned into wine in the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (Lab A). Then, learn how to use your sense of taste in our state-of-the-art sensory lab to distinguish which juices have high or low acid or sugar (Lab B). Does acid impact sweetness, does sugar impact sourness? You be the judge.

ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

Do you enjoy solving problems and enigmas? Do you like to explore the world? Are you fascinated by our diversity? Ecology and evolution is the study of our home, and understanding its mysteries is a fascinating journey. At Brock, you can learn how to conserve rare species, protect natural spaces, monitor the environment, solve environmental problems and manage resources through hands-on experience in the lab and in the field. Our location on the Niagara Escarpment gives us access to nature just by opening a door. The Niagara region also has farms, vineyards, cities, lakes, and a lot more to explore and learn. Come explore how ecologists estimate population sizes and assess biodiversity (Lab A), and then learn about how evolution works (Lab B)! Students will also learn about a new Applied Ecology program coming soon to Brock!

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Imagine this: a crime was committed in the 1970s and circumstantial evidence presented at the trial was instrumental in the sentencing of the accused to life in prison. The convicted declares their innocence. After 30 years in prison, key evidence left behind at the scene holds the clue to determining the innocence of the accused. In the forensic DNA isolation lab (Lab A), students will act as Forensic Molecular Biologists to isolate DNA from the crime scene, which will later be tested to confirm the identity of the suspect. In the DNA fingerprinting lab (Lab B), students will learn how DNA evidence assists in criminal, missing persons, mass disaster, and paternity cases. They will use current molecular forensic techniques on DNA samples collected from different suspects to identify the culprit.

NEUROSCIENCE

Have you ever wondered how the brain works? Are you interested in understanding how nerves function to send and receive signals that serve the basis of consciousness? Neuroscience is the study of nervous system function, and goes from the molecular level, through the cellular level, up to the level of entire organisms. Brock University is a great place to study neuroscience, with a thriving Neuroscience program and a range of world class researchers. Come and learn how Neuroscientists use genetic tools that can be controlled using light in order to control and investigate the function of the nervous system using optogenetic tools (Lab A). Then, learn how brain cells communicate in response to touch and movement (Lab B).

PLANT SCIENCES

Plants and algae are extraordinary organisms and play an essential role in the ecosystem! They are photoautotrophs which means they can produce their own food using sunlight and carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. Through this process, plants produce sugars and release oxygen, providing the essential energy (or food) that many other organisms need to survive. Autotrophs are extremely diverse and have developed many adaptations to survive different climates. In Lab A, students will review how plants cope with different environments including the ability to withstand freezing temperatures and how we can determine exactly how much cold a plant can tolerate. In Lab B, we will review diversity of phytoplankton species found in water bodies in the Niagara region, and how abundance of different species relates to water chemistry, pollution, light and temperature.

BIOINFORMATICS & BIOMEDICAL DATA SCIENCE

Thanks to the rapid advancement of computing and biotechnologies, a lot of biological research questions can be answered by analyzing existing data on powerful modern computers. This makes bio-computing a very exciting new field! Bio-computing covers many aspects of biomedical sciences, ranging from drug design, gene discovery, evolutionary biology to personal genomics and precision medicine. In this theme, students will have the opportunity to get a taste of the kinds of cool biomedical tasks that can be done on computers. In Lab A, students will be tasked to discover important things about a human gene (CA9 for the target in Lab B) and retrieve the specific information about its location on the chromosome, the length of the gene, and the size and function of the protein, as well as where in the human body the protein is expressed and how variable the gene is among people.  In the Lab B, students will have a chance to find out how a popular drug, SLC-0111, for treating cancer works by interacting with its protein target in 3D visualization using computer docking, and how they can design new and better drugs with artificial intelligence.