For a year now, the pandemic has impacted the ability of teachers to teach and students to learn. No matter who you are, experiencing a class on either side of a screen can be challenging. But for Samantha Dean, manager of the science labs in The University of Baltimore’s Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, this new reality has afforded an unusual opportunity: to innovate, interact, and to see her work reach entirely new audiences.

With a can-do spirit that is much appreciated by UBalt faculty and students, Dean set up customized take-home lab kits, so that science classes could go on in online sessions. The pandemic “kind of turned my world upside down,” Dean says, but nowadays she sees the kits she created as a great way for students to connect—both in class, and with family members and others who are sharing their living space.

“It’s spreading science way farther than I ever intended it to,” she says.