E&O: 700-plus students in two months

Last week Rapid City Journal education reporter Lynn Taylor Rick wrote a column about Science Liaison Laboratory Supervisor Connie Giroux, who is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and who also earned  a bachelor?s degree in chemistry and a master?s in technology management at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Giroux participates in Sanford Lab outreach programs, especially to schools on reservations. Taylor Rick wrote:

There she was, standing before a crowd of high school students at the Red Cloud Indian School when Connie Giroux learned just what a powerful influence she could be. ?I was telling them my background,? said Giroux. ?That?s when a student asked me if I was Native American. I said yes. Then she said,?You?re my hero.? It was pretty humbling.?

Humbling for Giroux, but also aligned with Sanford Lab?s short-term and long-term goals for education and outreach. ?Our role right now is prototyping,? Deputy Education and Outreach Director Peggy Norris says. The Red Cloud program, for example, began last spring with visits to the school, which is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, followed by a field trip for students to the lab. Building on that program, which continues this year, Norris organized outreach trips to schools on the Crow Creek and Lower Brule reservations in central South Dakota.

Closer to home, students from Lead Middle School used Sanford Lab facilities to connect via high-definition videoconference with scientists at the Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Research Center. Students from Moorcroft, Wyo., and Sturgis, S.D., participated in other lab programs.

Norris and Sanford Lab Science Education Specialist Julie Dahl are creating imaginative ways to link advanced underground research?the search for dark matter, for example, or neutrinoless double-beta decay?to science curricula in schools. And scientists like Giroux are helping. For example, South Dakota School of Mines microbiologists Rajesh Sani and Sudhir Kumar joined the trip to Lower Brule and Crow Creek. So did LUX physicist Sergei Uvarov of UC Davis and Sanford Lab water-treatment consultant Jim Whitlock. Norris also started SciGirls clubs in Lead and Rapid City.

In October and November, these prototype programs introduced more than 700 students to Sanford Lab scientists, engineers and technicians, and more than two dozen educators?from middle-school teachers to university faculty?participated.

?We?re not just randomly doing programs,? Norris said. ?Our broader mission is to use underground science as a hook, to excite students and to prepare them for science and engineering. We?re working toward that goal.?