Chaminade science outreach program reaches GCA

Johnny Aldan, a recent biology graduate from Chaminade University in Hawaii, shows Grace Christian Academy elementary students how germs spread quickly and easily. (Dennis B. Chan)

Grace Christian Academy students recently had some fun learning about how germs spread quickly and easily.

Johnny Aldan, a recent biology graduate from Chaminade University in Hawaii, showed them how through several science exercises on Monday.

Aldan shared lessons from the “I Am a Scientist,” or IAS, a science outreach program offered by Chaminade University. Researchers, faculty, post-doctorate, graduate and undergraduate students travel to Hawaii’s elementary schools to promote S.T.E.M. education throughout the year.

“This program is a big program out in Honolulu,” Aldan told Saipan Tribune. “We have served over 4,000 students to date. This is the first time the program has left Hawaii and come to another Pacific island.”

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories and Chaminade University sponsor the program. It began in 2009.

Aldan wowed about 41 GCA students on Monday, many of whom were excited to be affected by a “germ.”

Students were given tubes of water that when passed around each other would get hints of sodium hydroxide, or the “pretend germ” in the exercise. This would react with a chemical that turned the germ and the tube of water into different shades of pink.

Aldan had students line up into a “human bar graph,” made of three lines for “light, medium, or dark” germ.

“It’s a way to teach students how germs spread and how easily they are spread among people,” Aldan explained, so that students are “more mindful of their surroundings and how they act around people when they are sick.”

Aldan, who is visiting family on Saipan, volunteered to showcase the program.

He added that they also do other modules. Monday’s was called “Germs on Me.” Another module they do is “How Sweet It Is.” This module teaches students how to read nutrition labels on soda cans.

“We actually weight out the grams of sugar in the bottle. We get to see the difference between the actual can and the sugar that is in the can. It actually freaks them [students] out most of the time,” he said.

“It works for kids,” he added.

Aldan was motivated to share the program with the students because there were not many science showcases on island when he grew up. “We mostly stuck to our textbooks,” he said.

He got to see it firsthand when he got to Hawaii, he said, adding that the program has been on an upward trend since they started.

“I wanted to do this as a pilot [class] for Saipan. I was very thankful that GCA got me to come in,” he said, adding that he is open to invitations from other schools.

‘The program is a hundred percent free,” he said. “I wanted to do it here on Saipan to showcase to teachers here, so if they can spread the word out so hopefully [the Northern Marianas College] can start” a similar program, he said.

NMC assisted Monday’s event with three nursing students to help the presentation.