OPENING
Welcome to Episode 37 of The STEM Sessions Podcast, published on November 17, 2025. This is the podcast that says it’s OK to do your own research on STEM topics even if you don’t have any fancy credentials. I am your host, Cody Colborn.
INTRODUCTION
Had to fill out my annual accomplishments at work this week
- It’s part of our year end performance review
- One goal I’ve carried for three of four years is volunteering X hours in STEM community activities
- This used to be a corporate goal as well, part of the company’s image control, I mean philanthropic outreach
- Corporate goal was quietly dropped last year, but I’ve kept it
Volunteering in STEM activities is a great goal to set at work, if setting goals is a requirement that is
- First, it’s an incredibly easy goal to meet, or to exceed for that matter
- And that looks really good when it comes to performance reviews
- Second, it shows you’re doing more than the bare minimum, without really doing a whole lot extra
Plus, volunteering, in general, is typically a good thing for you and the cause for which you’re volunteering
- And I actually enjoy volunteering, at least the volunteering I choose to do
- I wouldn’t find it rewarding to volunteering for a political campaign, for example, even I was planning to vote for the candidate or the measure
- Volunteering for activities like trail maintenance or helping animal rescues, that’s what find that rewarding
I also find volunteering in STEM activities rewarding
- And I figure a wrap up of the STEM volunteering I did in 2025 would be a good topic of discussion for this podcast
- Maybe it can provide a taste for what’s out there and be an inspiration
This is The STEM Sessions Podcast Episode 37 – Volunteering in STEM
MAIN BODY
Primary goal of The STEM Sessions is to share STEM knowledge outside of traditional settings
- Those traditional settings being schools and classrooms and lecture halls, and typical teacher-student dynamics
- I’ve found volunteering in STEM activities to be a productive avenue for knowledge sharing
- I get to use my expertise to help organizations in ways other than throwing money at them
- And my knowledge base expands because I almost always learn something during the experience
- Here are a couple of those activities I participated in this year
First up is science fair judging, which takes place in March and April
- Started as a volunteer judge at the California Science and Engineering Fair in 2019
- Served as a judge every year since, save the COVID year
- I also judge in the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair
- I even tried the International Science and Engineering Fair, but that wasn’t for me – too high strung
- I’m going to speak to my activities with the state fair, but the county level is very similar
Always judged the Applied Structures category in the Junior division
- Junior division is 6th thru 8th grade
- I’ve never judged the senior division (9th through 12th grade), but from what I’ve seen, I don’t believe I’d enjoy the experience
- Junior division always seems more relaxed
- Projects focused more on setting up a good method and understanding the science
- Less about results and being innovative
- It’s also much less focused on winning
- Senior division can be way too competitive
So what does judging at a science fair entail?
- About a week or two before the fair, you’ll be assigned to your category and given access to the project write-ups, which you are supposed to review before arriving at the fair
- This is probably the most time consuming task, and is totally dependent on the number of projects in your category
- One year, I had 13 projects; another year, there were 30
- Each reviews takes me 20 minutes on average
- That includes reviewing, noting questions I want to ask the student, and preliminary scoring and ranking
Day of the fair is spent interviewing the students about their projects
- Usually ten minutes per interview
- When interviews are over, you join your fellow judges to deliberate
- We usually spend 15 or 20 minutes adjusting our rankings based on how the interviews went
- And then we pool our rankings and discuss what our final rankings will be
- When the choice is obvious, we’ve finished in a half hour
- If some back and forth takes place, maybe an hour and change
This year, I served as the chair for my judging category
- In charge of setting the interview schedule, which proved less trivial than I expected
- We had more projects than interview slots, so not every judge would be able to interview every student
- It took a several iterations to arrive at a schedule in which every student was interviewed by the same number of judges, and every judge interviewed the same number of students
Also in charge of moderating deliberations
- Delivering rankings to the judging committee
- Being the intermediary between the Fair and my judging panel
- Very similar to my duties as a hockey captain – a lot of extra work
- But at least I received a tote bag and an enamel pin for my troubles… which is more than I get for being a hockey captain
Also volunteered to be a part of the judging advisory committee, which meets monthly
- Joined the category definition subcommittee
- Working to redefine categories so they better encapsulate the project trends we’re seeing
Science fair judging is fun and rewarding
- It’s cool see firsthand how young kids view STEM
- Some of the kids have a lot of support from their teachers and parents
- Others do not, and are trying to do the best they can with little direction or help
- As a judge, you have the opportunity to encourage the students and offer the support they might not have
- You’ll find that a lot of kids, not just the overachievers, want to learn and pursue interests in STEM
- Judging science fairs is a great way to foster that enthusiasm
Another big volunteering effort I take on most every year is Western Monarch Count – the annual monitoring of the western population of monarch butterflies at their overwintering sites along the California coast
- Thanks to a Huell Howser episode, I knew about the overwintering phenomenon long before I signed up to volunteer
- It was always something I wanted to see
- Huell visited the overwintering site in Pismo Beach and a few years ago, I found myself driving through the area
- While researching the location, discovered volunteers were needed for the Western monarch count
- So I submitted my name
- I’ve participated every year since 2021
Until this year, there were two counts a season
- Thanksgiving count and the New Year’s count
- This year, a third count was added
- We now have an early season (mid-October), mid-season (around Thanksgiving), and late season (around New Years)
Volunteers are assigned known and suspected overwintering sites to monitor throughout the season
- Monitoring consists of walking the site, looking in trees for clustered or single monarchs
- It’s best to look while air temperature is below 55 F
- Above this temp, the monarchs begin to warm up and fly, making counting more difficult if not impossible
- Here in coastal southern california, that means getting to your site before sunrise
- Even that didn’t work for this year’s early season count as the overnight low rarely made it below 55 F in the first place
In addition to counting monarchs, if there are any, monitors collect weather data
- Also assess the habitat – the health and species of trees, the presence of nectar flowers in the area, does it look like pesticides are in use
I typically monitor the same two sites each season
- And in the four seasons I’ve volunteered, I’ve counted a grand total of three monarchs
- And those were counted in my very first site visit
- Ever since, my sites have sheltered zero monarchs
- It’s unlikely those sites ever had significant numbers – southern california doesn’t get the numbers that central california does – I’m sure it’s a temperature thing
- So I’m don’t feel disappointed
Western Monarch Count has collected overwintering data on the monarch population west of the Rockies since 1997
- In that time, the population has dropped from 1.2 million to 200,000 in 2023 and a few thousand in 2024
- A rebound is expected this year
- Data clearly shows cycles in the population
Xerces Society – the org that coordinates the western monarch count – is actively trying to decipher the data
- So the more sites monitored each season may improve the fidelity of the data and give the researchers a better chance of figuring everything out
- In 2024, over 250 sites were monitored
Including travel time, I spend about two hours each visit
- Keep in mind, I live relatively close to my sites, and since my counts are always zero, I spend very little time counting
- If the site actually has clusters, the time on site drastically increases
- If the people doing the boots on the ground monitoring were paid researchers, it would be a tremendous line item in the project’s annual budget
- And that’s why volunteers are needed
Improving the habitat found in your yard or local greenbelt by planting native milkweed and nectar plants is the best thing you can do to help monarchs
- But volunteering in the overwintering count is a cool way to tie in to the actual science
- And there are plenty of other monitoring activities out there for insects, birds, mammals, reptiles
- If you’re interested, just look for them
There are other STEM volunteer activities which I do as they come up – speaking at high school career days or joining invasive plant eradication events, for examples
- But science fair judging and monitoring monarch butterflies are the two I do every year
- I have the most fun doing them, and I find them to be the most rewarding
Granted, volunteering isn’t for everyone, but I certainly encourage everybody to try it at least once
OUTRO AND CREDITS
Thank you for listening to this episode of The STEM Sessions Podcast – a podcast researched, written, and produced by Cody Colborn.
This episode’s music is titled “Iron Cathedral” and was composed by Jyproject, and can be found at Pixabay.com.
The shownotes and transcript can be found at thestemsessions.com, which is also the best place to provide feedback, corrections, and value for value support.
Remember, doing your own critical research will always be to your benefit, and any pundit or scientist that tells you “just trust me, bro” or scolds you for fact checking and questioning isn’t offering true education.
So until the next one, keeping learning.