Clubes de Ciencia: Intensive science workshops in Mexico provide a unique opportunity for teaching, scientific and cultural exchange

Clubes de Ciencia, which translates to “Science Clubs” is an initiative started by a group of graduate students at Harvard University in 2014 to encourage scientific exchange between the US and Mexico. These science clubs are one-week long intensive workshops taught by graduate students and/or postdocs on a subject of their choice in six Mexican cities. Instructors apply to teach a workshop by sending a proposal to the organizing committee, who is looking for workshops that emphasize hands-on, practical ideas. The instructors, primarily graduate students in the US, are paired with local co-instructors who assist and often co-teach the workshop. Local student participants, who are in their last two years of high school and the first two years of college, are selected based on their interest and enthusiasm. Each class has about 15-20 students, so that the classroom setting is intimate and interactive Sponsors, who fund instructor stipends, class supplies and program development, include the Mexican department of energy (SENER), the Mexican national science foundation (CONACYT), Harvard and MIT. Host universities also provide space and resources. In this presentation we focus on clubs that were taught in January 2015 on ocean physics and July 2015 on ocean chemistry, both taught in Ensenada, Baja California at the national autonomous university. Both workshops included a combination of data analysis, lectures, experiments and computational modeling. The ocean physics class was also recorded intermittently and is being used as a test case for an online course. The format provided an intensive teaching and networking experience and could be interesting to implement in other contexts.