"I have been on many, many school field trips and nothing compares to this," exclaim teachers and chaperones that accompany children to the Marine Discovery Program, a College of Science (CoS) outreach program in Marine Biology for third through eighth graders.
Two to three mornings each week during the school year a different elementary or middle school class visits the UA campus to participate in the Marine Discovery Program. Students dissect sharks and squid, hold live starfish and sea cucumbers, and see evidence in marine fossils of a time when the Tucson area was covered by an ancient sea.
EEB graduate student Tricia Kennedy selects a lamprey from a tray of preserved rays, sharks, and coral reef fish to demonstrate the diversity of body form and to encourage the students from Butterfield Elementary School to do the same in a Marine Discovery Workshop. Maria Schuchardt photo
The outside stairs of the Chemistry and Biological Sciences (Koffler) Building thunder as thirty-two children stampede to the fifth floor for a 2-hour workshop in one of the teaching laboratories, where the students are led through a variety of interactive stations on different topics in marine science. Topics include marine fossils, shark, perch and squid dissection, marine conservation, and fish diversity.
University undergraduates are responsible for instruction in the workshops, and they develop and construct each of the interactive stations. In return, the university students receive four units of upper-division science credit, while gaining a great feeling of satisfaction by increasing their own knowledge through teaching others and, in the process, greatly contributing to the learning of children in the community. In addition, the undergraduates are excellent ambassadors for what the UA has to offer to a future student. The ethnic diversity and high proportion of women among I undergraduates in Marine Discovery also works to dash stereotypes held by many youngsters that scientists are exclusively "white men in lab coats". | |
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