Tours & Outreach

SRNML offers customized tours to meet the needs of a wide variety of visitors from on and off campus. We routinely conduct tours for courses on campus, job candidates, prospective researchers and workshops. We have also conducted field-trip tours from schools around the state at every level from first grade through high school AP biology, as well as from other institutions of higher learning in Oklahoma.

Tours are of variable lengths, coverage and depth and tailored to the audience. The briefest are ~10 minute walk-though tours, which are easy for us to organize without much prior notice, time permitting. Operational tours where visitors can look at a specimen and see equipment in full operation require at least 30 minutes. A one-hour class tour can briefly cover light, scanning, and electron microscopy; this can easily be expanded to provide more content.

Scheduling tours is easy - contact us by email to inquire.

We participate in a wide range of outreach activities on and off-campus,. Let us know if there's a way we might be able to interact with or support your group! In recent years we have participated in programs hosted at OU such as JrSEED, Be4Nano, OU C.L.I.M.B., and the Warrior Scholar Project. In total, we interact with >1,000 K-12 students in a typical year.

SRNML is the lead institutions participating in the Oklahoma Microscopy Society (OMS) UglyBug competition. Elementary students from across the state of Oklahoma collect and submit bugs to be imaged using an SEM by various members of the OMS. All the participating schools receive an SEM image of their bug with the winning schools receiving an optical dissecting microscope. 

We welcome self-sign-ups from K-12 classes as part of our K-12 microscopy experiences program. Please see OU's K-12 Experiences page for availability, details, and to sign up, but we encourage you to contact us to discuss and plan your visit in advance.

This Oklahoma Microscopy Society - hosted event is one of our favorite nights of the year! Generally in combination with the Oklahoma Microscopy Society spring meeting, we set up a number of exploration stations for kids of all ages (yes, parents grandparents, friends, and familes should play too!). Our most recent event at the Norman Public Library had hundreds of visitors!  Stay tuned for 2023...