On Saturday, Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment hosted BRYTE Science Day, an on-campus event organized to provide Providence elementary, middle and high school refugee students an opportunity to gain hands-on STEM experience through various experiments and crafts.
This year’s Science Day was the first to take place in more than a decade, according to Riyana Srihari ’27, co-president of BRYTE.
The event, which lasted four hours, consisted of several booths that gave tutees the opportunity to rotate through various activities. At one booth, they watched elephant toothpaste erupt from plastic bottles. At another, they launched eggs in self-engineered parachutes from the Smith-Buonanno Hall balcony.
Science Day hosted 167 attendees, including BRYTE tutees, tutors, volunteers and representatives of a dozen other student groups from Brown, Srihari said.
“We’ve enjoyed the turnout and the amount of people that have come. It’s made this whole entire place and experience so much more vibrant,” said Phatee Yang ’28 — fundraising co-chair for medicine for Doctors and Engineers Without Borders, one of the organizations that volunteered at the event.
BRYTE Science Day had four central goals: engaging students in science experiments, encouraging interaction across tutors and tutees, introducing students to Brown’s campus and bringing the Brown community together, Srihari said.
The event also aimed to encourage younger students to explore STEM careers, Yang said. In the field of science, “there’s so much fun to these activities outside of the classroom,” he added.
BRYTE Community Engagement Coordinator Olivia Spielman ’27 said that her favorite part of the event was watching students be “totally entranced” by the experiments.
As a member of the committee organizing the event, Spielman said she aimed to offer as many experiments as possible.
These students “don’t really get to experience the kind of experimentation that (Brown students) do, especially (in) school,” she added.
Tutees also explored other facilities at Brown, including the Brown Design Workshop and the Brown University Herbarium. Brown Emergency Medical Services staff showed students a glimpse into what their typical shift looks like, providing ambulance tours and a CPR crash course.
Srihari said the effort across clubs at Brown was “such a beautiful thing to see.”
The vast majority of K-12 student participants were under the age of 18, and The Herald was unable to obtain parental consent to interview them for this article.
Before the event, BRYTE also organized a food drive in Josiah’s and the Ivy Room, so Brown students could donate extra snacks to be served at the event. By the end of the drive, Srihari said, all the donation boxes were full.
Outside of Science Day, the organization pairs local K-12 refugee students with tutors and mentors at Brown. Throughout the year, the club also hosts events to “foster a sense of community amongst kids who share experiences of resettlement in the U.S.,” Srihari said.
BRYTE tutor Esther Liu ’27, said it can be difficult for students to connect with the Providence community, but events like Science Day create a “co-learning experience.”
“If we can support their educational journey in some ways, even if it’s the smallest way,” BRYTE member Jacob Luta ’29 said, “I think that it feels good to be a part of.”
