A Toast to Pinhead at Wine Fest

Let’s start with the bottom line: The Pinhead Institute is all about  bio-literacy and getting kids interested in science in general.

Science is going to change the world and it isn’t going to be my generation leading the charge. With that in mind, for the last 13 years Pinhead has been bringing world-class scientists to the Telluride region to inspire Southwestern Colorado school kids, getting them jazzed about everything scientific, from blowing things up, to building bridges and turning a pile of lego into robots.

Why am I writing about Pinhead now? Because our annual fundraiser, the Science of Cocktails, is coming up and we need Telluride insiders to turn out in force for the party.

Our event features world-class mixologists – Hotel Madeline (REV and SMACK), The Steaming Bean, The New Sheridan Chop House are represented and others such as Telluride Wine Festival co-director/master chef and wine maven Patrick Laguens – each presenting their own special libation. The evening also includes also a silent auction, a DJ, and dancing. While the drinks are definitely for the grown-ups, all the money raises goes to improving science education for our kiddos.

And while we are on the subject of young people in the region, take a look at our reach: to date, over 3000 students whose lives have been changed for the good by science education.

Throughout the school year, Pinhead brings internationally renowned scientists into regional schools to lead labs, experiments, workshops, and field expeditions for students in grade school through high school. The program enables kids from rural communities to interact with PhD scientists from around the world specializing in everything from nanoscience to biochemistry, field biology, climatology, and more.

About 500 kids attend our Punk Science talks every Tuesdays all summer long, events that shine a spotlight on super scientists presenting fun science facts in plainspeak and hands on demonstrations at the Telluride public school.

Around 300 children participate in our No School Science Projects. If school is out for the day, Pinhead swoops in with a fun science project for hands on learning at a local library.

We run summer camps both with Telluride Academy and in our own PInhead HQ and teach a total of 100 science-hungry kids cool things like insect phylogeny or how to build a drone.

The jewel in Pinhead’s crown is our internship program. We take emerging talents from Telluride and the surrounding region and place them in summer internships at universities and institutions across the country. After six intensive weeks, interns return for their senior year in school, often going on to fabulous colleges and universities, including Yale and Harvard, in part because of adding a Pinhead immersion in their field of choice on the resumes.

It is easy to see the many benefits Pinhead offers the youth of the Telluride community and beyond: we partner closely with Norwood, Nucla/Naturita, Ridgway and Ouray, and our hope is to expand even further afield. It is our intention to grow the program to service even more kids and to make sure we can say “Yes!” to all the educators and community leaders who call on us to enrich their communities with our scientific experts and thoughtful, innovative programs.

We start our first-ever coding class for kids this June, taught by a local computer super freak. We are even adding a community science fair to our offerings this fall.

But to do all that and keep our evergreen programs running annually, we really need your support, so please buy a ticket to our fundraiser, enroll your child in one of our summer programs, or just hit the donate button on our website. www.pinheadinstitute.org

I am Sarah Holbrooke, a television producer by background, so I have many miles on the ground making things happen and I am excited to throw my considerable contacts and enthusiasm into Pinhead as the nonprofit’s new executive director. A little known fact is I am a trained scientist: I graduated Wesleyan University with a degree in psychology and a focus on bio-psych and spent many long hours in the “rat lab.” I wrote a scientific paper that was published while I was still in college and presented to a meeting of UNESCO. But for the last 25 years, I’ve been mainly a news producer, getting the day’s most important stories told to an audience of millions. Now, with Pinhead, I’m just as excited to tell the thrilling story of scientific discovery to an audience of 100, or 10 or even one kid at a time. I’m joined by our fabulous new program director Stacy Klotka, a former working chemist, who dreams up the fun tasks she teaches our kids in her  programs. We also have a former Pinhead intern from Norwood, a recent Harvard grad, Chris Anderson, on our team. Chris is leading the charge on our Code Clubhouse and the upcoming Bug Camp. We’re all here for you and your kids, and for one night only, we present the Science of Cocktails at the Wine Festival Tent at the Oak Street Gondola Station, Saturday, June 28.

Come out and support us and we’ll build a great future together, one fabulous child, one drink, at a time.