Students and community members gathered at Oakdale Mall on Saturday for the sixth annual Binghamton University Day.
Extracting DNA from strawberries, jewelry making and learning how to count in different languages were all activities attendees could enjoy as part of the community outreach event, which featured over 30 different University departments ranging from science to the humanities.
Darcy Fauci, one of the organizers of BU Day, said that the main goal of the event was to connect with people from the local community who wouldn’t normally see what the University has to offer.
“Binghamton University is a tremendous resource in our community, and unfortunately not many people really get exposed to what’s there,” Fauci said. “We have a lot of local students — however, there are so many more people in the community who don’t get to see all of the faculty, researchers and performers.”
Dana Stewart, a BU Italian professor, was teaching people how to count from one to 10 in French, Spanish and Italian with the help of other faculty and students from the department of romance languages and literatures. She said she was excited to be tabling at the event this year because in the past, mostly science departments were featured.
“It’s great to get out and interact with the community,” Stewart said. “I’ve been participating and seeing how great of an event it is and seeing that a lot of the sciences were represented but that not as much of the humanities, so I’m extra excited that my colleagues wanted to do this.”
Performances and demonstrations occurred throughout the day, including ones from a cappella groups Koinonia and the Binghamton Crosbys. There were also games for children such as one conducted by the Physics Outreach Program (POP), where an air machine would shoot out plastic balls and kids had to run and collect as many as possible and bring it back to their side. Binghamton residents were also able to see different research that the University is conducting, such as work being done with 3D printers.
Tuc Nguyen, a graduate student studying biology, said the biology department attends BU Day every year to interact with the community through science and hands-on activities. He helped people extract DNA from strawberries, and there were also live insects on the table that people could look at and touch.
“We do this every year to raise awareness about genetics to the community and to introduce some basic science,” Nguyen said. “We’re also showing how we can do a very simple extraction of DNA from something very ubiquitous, like strawberries.”
Michelle Thompson, a first-year graduate student studying education, said that the various activities were great for her children to enjoy.
“This is excellent, it’s so much fun,” Thompson said. “I brought my kids because they like all of these hands-on activities.”
Lydie Murray, a Binghamton resident, also brought her children to BU Day, where they were able to learn about new topics with the help of science projects.
“This is a great event for the kids to get involved with hands-on activities,” Murray said. “My favorite part has probably been the fossils and some of the cool science projects they have. The kids think it’s cool because they’ve never seen things like that before.”
Fauci said that as members of the community, it is a part of the University’s responsibility to connect with the people that make up the Binghamton community.
“It’s the mission of the University, and it has been for many years, to do more to make connections with the community,” Fauci said. “So this is just one of those efforts to make those connections with the community at large.”