The Citizen Science (Cit. Sci) workshop is offered to all first-year students during January before the Spring semester begins. This is a required three-week workshop that aims to transform students at the University to become scientifically literate by developing ‘a core understanding of both the conduct and the content of science.’ Students need a ‘Satisfactory Pass’ in this course to graduate from the University. Please see the Parami University Catalog. 

Program Description

The Citizen Science (Cit. Sci) Program is a science literacy foundation program that introduces students to use various approaches to scientifically analyze a chosen theme. While a focused theme may be different from year to year, the theme has the characteristics of general importance and relevance to society. The chosen theme for the year 2022–2023 is 'Infectious Diseases'. Students look at different methods or approaches to study ‘Infectious Diseases’ and share their findings in class. They engage in hands-on science experiments to look at microorganisms using foldscopes, low-cost origami-based microscopy devices. They study it from the public health perspective through epidemiology and health systems. They also analyze data sets of a few chosen infectious diseases, look at the scientific communication on infectious diseases, and study government policies around infectious diseases. 

Grouping

For the final project, students are initially grouped into four fields (1)Biostatistics (2)Epidemiology (3)International Health and (4)Behavioral Health. Then, 3 or 4 student from each field brought into four diseases such as Malaria, Covid-19, HIV and Tuberculosis (TB). Among those groups, the following disease group was given bronze award.