Our Reflections on MB497 and on Our Digital Archive
Be sure to check out our full process and dialogues:here!
Carissa Sherman ('21)
I am a Molecular Biology Major with minors in Anthropology and Biochemistry. This class has allowed me to explore identity and its role in science, and how science can inform our identity. Initially, I had signed up for racialized medicine, as I am interested in a career in healthcare. However, I am happy that I had the opportunity to learn more about this topic with Jia. I think one of the most powerful aspects of this class was being able to consider the historical and social contexts of scientific research. I've also had a great time with my peers, who I have gotten to know over the years. Thanks for making this class enjoyable over Zoom Uni, and I look forward to seeing what we'll do!
This project has been challenging but exciting. I think that Dr. Yamada put it best when she told Jia and I that if we’re going to put time into a project, we might as well make it accessible. Therefore, we carefully selected our items and how we designed the layout of the website. We wanted this to be a resource that could be easily navigated and easily understood. An additional challenge that I faced was finding sources appropriate for kids - many times I asked myself if I would show this to my own kids, which is difficult to imagine! Overall, it was a valuable experience to see the variety of sources available! It was also exciting to compile these sources in a way that we felt would help improve one’s understanding of sexuality, regardless of age and scientific background.
Jia Mei ('21)
I am a Molecular Biology Major with minors in Chemistry and Chinese. I came into this class thinking that it would be a culmination of all the scientific knowledge I learned over the four years at CC-- it turned out to be much more than that. We explored difficult, intersectional topics of science with race, sex, sexuality, medicine, and many more. One of my biggest accomplishments was doing a 2-hour presentation with Carissa on the topic of genetics and sexuality where we explored its history, social implications, and current research. Seeing other classmates do these presentations also made me very proud. The discussions we had were so meaningful, and I oftentimes extended these Zoom classroom discussions into real life with my other friends who are Sociology and Political Science majors. This course has impacted the way I think about the ethics of scientific research and science communication on complex traits.
This was my first time making a digital archive using Omeka, and being able to do it on a topic of genetics and sexuality, which was the culmination of my senior capstone, was meaningful. I had a lot of fun collaborating with Carissa to find multimedia sources. One of the challenging parts was finding sources that are accessible to the 3rd grader audience, but this challenge made us more creative in thinking about how to communicate this topic to younger audiences. We came up with really cool ones, which include using cartoons, songs, and art to explore this complex topic of sexuality. We also had a big learning curve in making the archive visually appealing and accessible for the user. Overall, the creation of this digital archive was influential to my thinking of what science communication means to different audiences.