The Evolution Institute

🌱 Exciting updates from our education project, East Pasco Academy!

Presently, our student body encompasses 2 infants, 6 toddlers (aged 1- and 2-years-old), 7 preschoolers (aged 2- and 3-years-old), and 15 VPK students (aged 4-years-old). 🌟

🌎 Our students are from Middle Eastern, African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian backgrounds, representing low, low-middle-, and middle-income households.

🌿 We recently received some plant donations from the University of South Florida and will be planting a guava tree and blueberry bushes, as well as receiving some equipment donations to help start a garden with the children. We should be starting our Garden project in the next few weeks and look forward to updating you as we progress.

📚 Thanks to a grant from the Early Learning Coalition, we've updated our curriculum to Frog Street Curriculum this school year, which includes Dr. Becky Bailey's Conscious Discipline. Our children are thriving with this engaging approach, fostering social-emotional development and academic growth. The response from both our children and families has been incredible, and it's also boosting parent engagement!

A big thank you to our dedicated Assistant Director, Londa Edwards, for her ongoing commitment to our academy's success! 🙏

You can learn more about how our investments in education use science-backed principles for growth at https://evolution-institute.org/

Darwin Day is this Saturday, February 12th! It is observed internationally to honor the work of Charles Darwin and to promote the advancement of science, education, and well-being for all. Here are some free online events you can catch this week to celebrate the common language of science for a better world:

⚛️ Adaptation for Survival: Humans and their Pathogens | February 10th, 4pm EST | Penn State University ⚛️

Join the Center for Human Evolution and Diversity and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences to celebrate Darwin Day 2022 with distinguished speaker Dr. Nita Bharti (Huck Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor of Biology, Penn State University).

Bharti’s Darwin Day lecture will examine how understanding human-pathogen interactions in the environmental and cultural contexts in which they occur is a global health priority. She will discuss how local context can help identify and integrate unconventional types of data on humans, pathogens and environments to help prevent diseases that threaten humans in the populations where they most urgently need to be addressed.

To register: https://www.psu.edu/news/campus-life/story/nita-bharti-deliver-2022-darwin-day-lecture/

⚛️ Genome Editing, Eco-Evolutionary Perspective | February 11th, 10:15-1:20pm CET | University of Oslo ⚛️

Gene editing approaches has revolutionized our ability to change the genetic code. This has a potential to benefit humankind regarding improved crops, production animals, aquaculture, new drugs, and biomaterials, as well as being extremely powerful tools for research. However, there are many challenges associated with a disruptive technology such as CRISPR. The University of Oslo's Darwin Day 2022 is devoted to this theme and prominent scientists will provide their views on the potentials and pitfalls from an eco-evolutionary perspective.

There will be open lectures by Detlef Weigel (Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen, Germany) and Anna Wargelius (Institute of Marine Research, Norway). They will also be announcing the winner of their Darwin Prize

To register:
https://www.mn.uio.no/cees/english/research/news/events/public/darwin-day/2022/index.html

⚛️ Darwin, Evolution, Myth- and Humanism | February 12th, 3:00-4:30pm EST | Tampa Bay Coalition of Reason⚛️

Today, science, and perhaps especially evolution, is seen as central to modern Humanism, and it is variously embraced and vigorously rejected by people of many religious perspectives. But how well does evolution work as religion? Is, as E.O. Wilson once said, “The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have”?

Presented by Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist, humanist, and science education pioneer. She was the founding Executive Director of The National Center for Science Education, and a consultant for the legal team that won the Supreme Court case disallowing the teaching of creationism in public schools.

To register: https://www.meetup.com/Tampa-Bay-Coalition-of-Reason/events/283181606/

⚛️ Mass Extinctions in our Once and Future World | February 12th, 7:00pm EST | Darwin Day Connecticut ⚛️

The story of life on Earth is still being told. Species come and go, but what does it all mean? What can the fossil record of past mass extinctions inform us of what is to come? Dr. Pincelli Hull, Yale U. Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale Peabody Museum, will explore these questions.

Her presentation will provide an introduction to the scientific study of mass extinction events, an overview of mass extinctions through time, and insights from the ancient world for our ongoing biodiversity crisis. The event will also feature audience participation with a challenging and entertaining science quiz.

To register: https://www.darwindayct.org/

Last Friday East Tampa Academy held a free health screening for K-1st Grade 🙌

Today we are realizing the potential of collective power. 🙏

If you have already donated for , THANK YOU for supporting our mission to uplift science and revitalize community.

And if you haven't, it is not too late to join us. Donate now to become a part of the solution and celebrate the power of cooperation: http://ow.ly/v3iC50H0hIi

We are grateful for each and every one of you, and continue to be inspired by what is possible when we work together!

Community engagement is a critical and often severely undervalued element necessary for long term change, a process that requires years of dedication, competence, and resourcefulness.

For this reason in honor of , we also want to highlight one of our amazing partners that makes a difference in her community everyday.