A journey to dental school
After graduating in the fall of 2017 from San Francisco State university, I embarked on a one-year long internship as a dental assistant....
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SFSU's Science Communication
The Pandemic Academics
Dennis Jongsomjit
Mar 23, 20216 min read
The Power of Awe
Most of us have felt moments of awe, but perhaps many of us have never taken the time to think about how these experiences change us.
70 views0 comments
Florence E. Fields
Mar 18, 20212 min read
The importance of the sustainability of the forest and the consequences of deforestation
For thousands of years trees have been a vital source of wood, providing an essential material for building homes. Forest are natural...
25 views0 comments
Rocky Ng
Mar 8, 20213 min read
K-12 Science Teaching as a Professional Career
Rocky is a 4th-year biotechnology teacher at South San Francisco High School. He earned his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and...
25 views0 comments
Angela Lane, Lela Legesse & Midley Michaud
Mar 4, 20213 min read
Stand up for Equity and Inclusion!
Science is Power and we all need to be at the table Science has the power to change the course of history for better or for worse. This...
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Lela Legesse
Mar 1, 20212 min read
5 Ways to Revamp Your LinkedIn Profile
As we move more and more to a technology-based society, we have found ways to enhance our experiences. Over the past 20 years we've been...
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Florence E. Fields
Feb 21, 20212 min read
The Expectations and Progress of Women
Confucius once said, “a hundred women are not worth a single testicle.” Kurt Vonnegut thought that “Educating a beautiful woman is like...
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Fiona Duong
Feb 15, 20213 min read
Tips For Reading A Scientific Paper
Reading a scientific paper can be intimidating. I didn’t read a lot of academic research papers as an undergraduate student (my classes...
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Angela Lane
Feb 11, 20212 min read
Honoring 3 Trailblazers
As an African American woman in STEM, it has been my ongoing goal to find role models for myself and my students. I’d like to highlight...
18 views0 comments
Faith De Amaral
Feb 8, 20213 min read
Simple things you can do to help native bird populations
Have you ever looked outside at that tufted titmouse, the singing white-crowned sparrow, or even that mischievous scrub jay, and thought...
39 views0 comments
Kathryn Papoulias
Feb 8, 20214 min read
3 Field Guide Apps to Help Settle the Brown Recluse Argument Once and For All
If you’ve dabbled in birding, espoused your love of local wildflowers, or had to explain that “no, that isn’t a brown recluse”, and “yes...
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Dennis Jongsomjit
Feb 4, 20214 min read
Exploring the Unknown - Thoughts on Science, Persistence, and Progress
Imagine sitting around a table with some of the world's experts on Antarctic ecology. All in all, including everyone at the table, we’re...
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Jeremiah Ets-Hokin
Feb 1, 20212 min read
Sunflower Seastar Now Critically Endangered
In August of 2020 the IUCN officially declared the Sunflower Seastar (Pycnopodia helianthoides) as critically endangered, one step before...
51 views0 comments
Salvador Alvarado and Rocky Ng
Jan 20, 20213 min read
Challenges for Educators During Distance Learning
By Salvador Alvarado and Rocky Ng It has been more than half a year now since schools and universities have had to close their doors to...
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Anonymous
Jan 18, 20214 min read
Normalize Telling Students That They Are Enough (TW: mental health issues and suicide)
It was my first round of finals at UC Berkeley as I heard throughout the dorms that another student had jumped off of the open balcony on...
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Florence E. Fields
Jan 14, 20212 min read
Climate Change Is Real: Green House Gases Are The Cause And Humans Contribute
Climate change describes global shifts in normal weather patterns and global warming which for those who do not pay close attention have...
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Lauren Levesque
Jan 11, 20214 min read
Carcinogens seem to be in everything, but what are they??
A carcinogen is an agent that has the capacity to cause cancer in humans. The agent can be of a chemical nature (e.g. drugs), physical...
186 views0 comments
Marie Lilly
Jan 5, 20212 min read
Opinion: How do we prevent the next pandemic?
Written by Marie Lilly Long before the COVID-19 outbreak, many brilliant scientists predicted that the next pandemic would be a...
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Casey Mitchell, Jarred Dela Cruz, Lauren Levesque
Jan 4, 20217 min read
Online Learning: How are students doing?
By: Casey Mitchell, Jarred Dela Cruz, and Lauren Levesque The transition to online learning due to restrictions imposed by COVID-19 has...
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Lela Legesse
Dec 22, 20203 min read
Are We Doing Enough? The Battle with Distance Learning during COVID-19
As we all battle with the effects that this pandemic has caused us physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially there are far...
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Jeremiah Ets-Hokin
Dec 21, 20202 min read
Inclusivity In SCUBA
As a SCUBA diver, one of the most common questions I get is “what do you see down there?”. This question speaks to the sense of unknown...
6 views0 comments
Midley Michaud
Dec 18, 20202 min read
How to stay active and optimize well-being during the pandemic
We’re all going through these uncertain times together, not knowing what we should do to maintain our well being and stay healthy. I...
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Faith De Amaral
Dec 14, 20204 min read
Affirmations to Tell Yourself While Waiting for Grad Admissions Committees to Take Their Sweet Time
While you wait and twiddle your thumbs for acceptance decisions from the 30 schools you applied to (looking at you, pre-meds), the...
399 views0 comments
Brendan Heath
Dec 14, 202011 min read
An Open Letter to Your Family "Covidiot" - Part 2: Vaccines
During the summer of this pandemic, I received an email from an educated family friend that had quite a bit of information I disagreed...
66 views0 comments
Marie Lilly
Dec 11, 20203 min read
Enough with the tired narratives about Women in STEM. Research needs to be intersectional.
Written by Marie Lilly I opened Twitter on November 18, 2020, to see a Nature Communications article titled, “The association between...
68 views0 comments
Casey Mitchell and Jarred Dela Cruz
Dec 3, 20203 min read
BioSLAM: Revamping Online Curriculum
COVID-19 changed norms worldwide and our daily habits and routines will continue to shift in the foreseeable future. From how we interact...
140 views0 comments
Salvador Alvarado
Dec 2, 20202 min read
Are you a transfer student looking to get into medical or dental schools? All grades count!
I began my academic career at San Francisco State University as a transfer student from City College of San Francisco. At City, I...
136 views0 comments
Brendan Heath
Dec 2, 20207 min read
The Near and Long Term: A Couple of Promising Advances Due to Recent Focus on Coronavirus Research
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19 has dominated headlines, attention, and pretty much every aspect of the world so...
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Fiona Duong
Nov 30, 20203 min read
STEM + Art = STEAM: A New Approach to Learning
What does art have to do with science? And what does science have to do with art? Although the two may seem like completely opposite...
81 views0 comments
Kathryn Papoulias
Nov 23, 20204 min read
3 Books by Women about the Environment that Everyone Should Read
“This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn’t this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to...
128 views0 comments
Casey Mitchell
Nov 19, 20204 min read
Make the most of quarantine. Build your career!
Developing in your career is difficult. Being quarantined and trying to develop your career feels impossible. Back in 2018, I realized...
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Jeremiah Ets-Hokin
Nov 18, 20203 min read
Alaskan reefs face danger from predator loss and climate change
The Aleutian Islands are a string of 14 large volcanic islands and 55 smaller islands stretching from Alaska to Russia. If you happen to...
12 views0 comments
Lela Legesse
Nov 12, 20205 min read
The Impact of Transitioning to Distance Learning due to COVID-19 in Low-income Communities
As the number of infections and deaths due to the coronavirus continues to increase daily around the world, the main focus has been on...
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Fiona Duong
Nov 9, 20203 min read
Writing A Scientific Manuscript: The Path to Publication (Hopefully!)
Before I embarked on the journey of writing a manuscript, my understanding of the writing and publication process was fairly vague. This...
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Rocky Ng
Nov 5, 20205 min read
Distance Learning Tips for STEM Educators
Rocky is a 4th-year biotechnology teacher at South San Francisco High School. He earned his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and...
132 views0 comments
Kathryn Papoulias
Oct 30, 20203 min read
Climate Change, Communities, & Collections
What do protest signs, mushrooms, and feathered headdresses have in common? They’re all objects featured in the Global Museum’s latest...
40 views0 comments
Brendan Heath
Oct 28, 20208 min read
An Open Letter to Your Family “Covidiot” – Part 1
Link to "Part 2" During the summer of this pandemic, I received an email from an educated family friend that had quite a bit of...
157 views0 comments
Lauren Levesque
Oct 26, 20203 min read
Learning to Code: A Biologist’s Journey
I always saw myself involved in biomedical research, as I enjoyed my science classes and wanted to do work that could potentially have...
28 views0 comments
Dennis Jongsomjit
Oct 22, 20205 min read
Social Justice in Conservation Science: Why We Need Your Voice
Diversity in conservation could lead to better and more creative solutions to the environmental justice issue.
113 views0 comments
Midley Michaud
Oct 21, 20202 min read
Time management: Maximizing your time to feel less stressed
All of us have the same number of hours in a day….Yes, even celebrities! Though as a student, it seems like there’s never enough time to...
20 views0 comments
Jarred Dela Cruz
Oct 15, 20205 min read
The Presidential Race: Through a Scientific Lens
As the Presidential Election on November 3rd approaches, voters generally have a strong sense of who they want to vote for based on key...
73 views0 comments
Jarred Dela Cruz
Oct 7, 20204 min read
Science in the Ballots: Proposition 14
November 3, 2020. I’m sure you’ve seen this date in the news or through the constant reminders on social media by your...
130 views0 comments
Marie Lilly
Sep 28, 20206 min read
Tips for applying to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)
Written by Marie Lilly, 2020 NSF GRFP Awardee There are thousands of different graduate schools, programs, and lab groups to choose from...
236 views0 comments
Adrienne Le, Minerva Orellana and Jordan Salomon
Sep 18, 201910 min read
PhD, do you love me? I’m applying
Hi reader, this is blog post where we are going to discuss our experiences with applying to PhD programs in biology for Fall 2019. We are...
41 views0 comments
Johnson Yang
May 7, 20191 min read
A letter to the upcoming future scientists
When I was a freshman in college, I thought I knew everything is happening around me because I was determined and thought I knew the...
19 views0 comments
Tersa Ortega and Amy Wong
Apr 23, 20196 min read
A review of “Chemistry” by Weike Wang
The novel Chemistry by Weike Wang has been recognized and recommended by many well-known individuals, including Oprah. The story is...
636 views0 comments
Andrew Mahoney
Apr 12, 20192 min read
Space Travel: The Next Big Leap?
Space has been a big topic in the last year. From Elon Musk launching his Tesla into space, live streaming for all to see, to NASA...
8 views0 comments
Joseph B Comendador
Apr 10, 20193 min read
Importance of Natural History Museums
Most people think that museums only house arts and anthropological exhibits, for the most part. Moreover, there is the thinking that...
719 views0 comments
Wesley Sun
Apr 9, 20193 min read
Impossible Burger: The Fake Meat That’s Making Real News
It seems like healthy foods have been steadily gaining popularity in these recent years. You don’t have to try hard to find countless...
9 views0 comments
Coohleen Coombes
Apr 1, 20194 min read
The importance of activism and social justice in STEM
Hello everyone! In today’s post, I would like to talk about the importance of activism and social awareness in STEM. This is a topic I’ve...
14 views0 comments
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