COVID-19 Science and Society Resources
Like nearly everyone around the globe, daily life at the Center for Science and Society has been uprooted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us were looking for ways to help, options for teaching our children, and sometimes, an escape from it all. Please feel free to contact us with any additional resources.
These links direct you to an external website. While resources have been vetted, the Center for Science and Society is not responsible for any content on the page.
This page was last updated in October 2022.
- At-Home STEM Resources includes activities, experiments, and projects from the New York Hall of Science.
- BioBus Town Halls (held monthly) give K-12 students the chance to ask questions and guide a conversation with scientists. BioBus also has a selection of weekly science challenges.
- Check out classroom resources from the National Science Teaching Association.
- Go Science Girls (a personal website) has a list of K-12 teaching tools and resources.
- Explore online programming from science centers and museums across the country. Curated by the Association of Science and Technology Centers.
- High school students can watch the video series Learning from Premodern Plagues from the Newberry Library.
- Kids’ Educational Websites and Learning Resources Guide from SiteJabber.
- Learn computer science via Code.org, visit Praxent for a guide to coding and programming, or view a list of beginning coding games from HP.
- National Geographic lists citizen science projects appropriate for students in third grade to twelfth grade.
- STEM Matters has a collection of virtual field trips for students.
- Students can debate environmental issues through Science Matters: The Case of Plastics, a role-playing game from the Science History Institute.
- Summer Camp Hub has a list of free virtual summer camps for children.
- View the #coronavirussyllabusK12, a crowdsourced toolkit of books, teaching plans, and media for K-12 educators.
- #CoronavirusSyllabus developed by president of the Social Science Research Council, Alondra Nelson, and crowdsourced from hundreds of instructors and scholars. Includes relevant articles and books, symposia, podcasts, film, and other resources for teaching this moment in higher education.
- COVID-19 Ethics: Health, Inequality, and Justice is a teaching, research, and practice resource from the Columbia University Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics.
- Crises of Democracy Curriculum, created in 2019, examines threats to democracy through the prism of cultural trauma. This teaching resource was developed by Columbia University in partnership with four global universities.
- Mini-lectures in science and anthropology developed by CSS Affiliated Faculty member Paige West and Zoë Wool.
- Pandemic Syllabus is a historical look at pandemics, public health, and infectious-disease control developed by David Barnes, Merlin Chowkwanyun and Center Interim Director Kavita Sivaramakrishnan.
- Virtual Campus is an online resource for Columbia and Barnard students with social games and ideas for the general public along with Columbia-specific health resources.
- For more ideas, search for #coronavirussyllabus or #teachthevirus on your social media platform of choice.
- Join the COVID-19 Citizen Science Study led by the University of California, San Francisco.
- Any Columbia student can apply to tutor children of families working at CUIMC online in a variety of K-12 subjects to assist in supporting at-home education
- Columbia COVID Tech Innovation Group from Columbia Engineering leads various projects to assist medical workers in creating and sterilizing equipment.
- Donate to your local food bank (database from Feeding America).
- Find other remote volunteer opportunities with VolunteerMatch.
- Guide and Design for Rapidly Produced Face Shields developed by Columbia University Libraries.
- NYC scientists, researchers, and managers can volunteer through Columbia Researchers Against COVID-19.
News organizations that have lowered their paywall for COVID-19 coverage include
- The Atlantic
- Columbia University Press
- Duke University Press
- Financial Times
- Houston Chronicle
- LA Times
- New York Times
- New Yorker
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Science as Culture Journal
- Science Magazine
- Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal
- Washington Post
Other COVID-19 publications include
- Listen to Lab in the Time of Coronavirus from Columbia's Zuckerman Institute
- The Royal Society of London is making all of its research findings and data regarding the Covid-19 pandemic open access.
- You can also read first-person accounts shared in major news outlets and other resources via the Institute of Psychiatry at Cornell University.
- What Happens Next? breaks down possible Covid-19 futures with playable simulations.
- How Much Do You Really Know About Coronavirus? from Bloomberg test the taker’s knowledge of COVID-19 facts, last updated on July 17, 2020.
- Visit Columbia University Irving Medical Center's COVID-19 Research Updates to learn more about recent research discoveries from Columbia scientists.
For COVID-19 apps and risk assessment, the following resources are available
- COVID-19 Exposure Notification app. Several state health departments across the country have created COVID-19 contact tracing apps which will provide exposure notifications if one has been in contact with a carrier of the virus.
- Browse the Making and Knowing Project’s newly published Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640.
- CDC’s Stop the Outbreak game lets you step into the shoes of an epidemiologist.
- Color Our Collections from the New York Academy of Medicine features free coloring books from museums and libraries around the globe.
- Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics is an online collection from Harvard University offering historical perspectives on the science and public policy of epidemiology today.
- New York Academy of Medicine Library offers databases and digitized exhibitions and manuscripts, including the recently published recipes and remedies digital collection.
- NYBG at Home from the New York Botanical Garden is a new content hub featuring videos, plant guides, virtual events, recipes for kids
- Science Experiments Around the Home from Business Cost Saver has a collection of biology, physics, and chemistry experiments.
- This resource was suggested by Tony Marsden.
- Smithsonian Learning Lab lets you explore collections of science, culture, and history.
- Travel to museums and explore new themes using Google Arts and Culture.
- Visit the National Parks with Google Arts and Culture in a guided tour of five parks from around the country.
- Visit Mars with the Curiosity Rover thanks to Google and NASA.
- Watch live cameras from the San Diego Zoo.
- Watch past Center for Science and Society lectures and workshops via our Youtube channel.
- Zooniverse is the largest citizen science platform in the world. Explore projects from across the sciences and humanities.
General Science and Society Resources
- Edwin H. Armstrong Papers (1886-1982)
- Elizabeth Blackwell Letters (1850-1884)
- Charles Frederick Chandler Papers (1847-1937)
- Marie Curie - Maire Meloney Correspondence (1920-1943)
- Edward Epstean Papers (1923-1942)
- Robert Fulton Papers (1809-1838)
- Mary Lasker Papers (1940-1993)
- Robert K. Merton Papers (1928-2003)
- Auchincloss Florence Nightingale Collection (1838-1910)
- Walter W. Palmer Collection of Medical Education Reprints (1906-1950)
- George Braxton Pegram Papers (1903-1958)
- George A. Plimpton Papers (1634-1956)
- Michael Idvorsky Pupin Papers (1800-1995)
- Otto Rank Papers (1903-1988)
- David Eugene Smith Collection of Historical Papers (1400-1899)
- David Eugene Smith Professional Papers (1860-1945)
- Lynn Thorndike Papers (1902-1963)
- Lillian D. Wald Papers (1895-1936)
Other Library Collections:
- Community Service Society Archives (1842-1995)
- Jewels in Her Crown: Treasures from the Special Collections of Columbia’s Libraries
- Oral History Archives feature individual interviews and group projects such as Physicians for Reproductive Health and Choice, the Thomas Alva Edison Project, and the Radio Pioneers Project.
- Library of the Surgeon-General’s Office Index Catalog
Research Guides
- Behaving and Misbehaving: The Body in Early Modern Europe
- Bioethics
- Craft and Science: Objects and Making in the Early Modern World
- Earth Systems and Environmental Politics, Policy, and Management
- Environmental and Energy Policy
- Food Sustainability
- History of Health and Healing in Africa
- Sustainability Policy Studies
Subject specialists can be viewed via the Columbia Libraries website.
View the Sophie & Alex Rosner Seminar on Health, History & Social Justice Seminar Series video archive from the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health.
- Columbia University - Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health
- Columbia University - University Seminar in the History and Philosophy of Science
- City College of New York - Department of History
- City University of New York - Department of History
- Fordham University
- New York University - Gallatin School of Individualized Study
- New York University - Department of History
- New York Academy of Medicine
- New York Academy of Medicine - Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health
- New York Academy of Sciences
- New York Botanical Garden
- New York Botanical Garden - The Humanities Institute
- State University of New York
- Stevens Institute of Technology - IEEE History Center
- British Society for the History of Science
- British Society for the Philosophy of Science
- Center for History of Physics
- Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
- European Association for the Study of Science and Technology
- History of Science Society
- International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science
- Science History Institute
- Society for the History of Technology
- Society for Philosophy and Technology