Andrew Yick may have found the perfect antidote to the pressures of a Ph.D. program in engineering: spending a couple of hours a week arm-deep in goo.

Since September, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering graduate student has volunteered with the Mission Science Project, the long-running after-school program that invites elementary-school students from the University Park and Health Science neighborhoods to participate in hands-on science activities.

Funded by a Neighborhood Outreach grant, the program aims to pique the intellectual curiosities of budding Einsteins, encouraging them to pursue high school and college studies in the typically undervalued areas of science and engineering.

Yick, who got involved with Mission Science through the Joint Education Project, felt his own long-running scientific affinities would make him an ideal match for the program. “I believed I could spread my love and enthusiasm for the sciences to the youth in the area,” he said.

The 25-year-old works with second and third graders at Weenes Elementary, where the program generally attracts 20 to 25 students a week. A teacher oversees the group and selects the projects, which this fall have ranged from mixing up that aforementioned goo (“like ‘Ghostbusters’ stuff,” Yick said) to building air-propelled rockets. Yick works with the kids on an individual basis, helping them cut, glue, pour or mix while explaining the scientific principles behind the given project.

The one constant? A certain level of controlled chaos.

“The week we made ice cream was crazy,” Yick recalled. “Water, milk and sugar in little plastic bags plus 8-year-old kids equals one big mess.”

But it’s the bedlam that seems to excite the students most. “Seems the messier and wet things are, the happier they are,” Yick said.

In the midst of all the building and mixing, the young charges come to see a marriage between enjoyment and learning. As Yick explained, “Mission Science encourages kids [who] don’t think they’re able to do science that they can and that it’s fun and exciting.” The students also leave every week with some tangible result of what they’ve worked on, which Yick believes helps underscore their “sense of accomplishment at the end of each session.”

The England native has found his teaching skills greatly enhanced during his time with Mission Science, an ideal benefit for a Ph.D. candidate. “It’s taught me how to express my scientific ideas clearly so that a 7- or 8-year-old – literally – can understand.”

But occasionally their enthusiasm evokes a bit of nostalgia in the career scientist. “I forget how it is to be a kid sometimes. They are amazed by little things.”