Philadelphia Science Festival Fun

For the second year, Salus University participated in The Franklin Institute’s Science Festival Carnival, held this year at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. Despite cool temperatures and a cloudy morning, an estimated 50,000 participated in over 150 fun, fascinating and sometimes outright wacky interactive tasks aimed at budding scientists.

The Salus booth, “How well can you see, hear, speak?” was intended for all age ranges and, judging from the crowds waiting in line, the activities offered were just right. While audiology students offered to let subjects experience a “superhero” ear (a bionic ear: a  mega-microphone with special headphones that picks up conversations from a distance away), optometry students challenged their ability to discern colors with the Ishihara color plates (subjects discern numbers “hidden” in colored backgrounds), and speech-language pathology students tempted tastebuds and tested speech with marshmallows (attempt to say “My name is ____” while having a marshmallow in your mouth, which demonstrated the importance of a tongue). The students were as engaged in the process as the subjects, who ranged from pre-schoolers to grandparents.  

The students and faculty who volunteered focused on making sure everyone had fun while learning, a perfect combination for a science festival. Volunteers included audiology faculty members Dr. Rebecca Blaha and Dr. Martin Pienkowski; Ms. Lynne Corboy, director of Institutional Advancement; Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) Class of 2019 members, Taylor Buotte, Amanda Helker, Melissa Lohin, Rhea Malaluan, and Zora Nazarei; BaoNgoc Nguyen ’18OD; and Class of 2017 Speech-Language Pathology students Samantha Capcino; Alexis Fetterman; Cara Jones; Karly Kriger; Kelley Morris; Jillian Muller; Alaina Principi; Samantha Rubin, and Bridget Turnbach.