E&O blooming in spring
April was a big month for the Education and Outreach Department. More than 1,000 students, teachers and members of the general public participated in Sanford Lab programs, and participation in May is following suit.
?This time of year is always the high season for student field trips,? Education and Outreach Director Ben Sayler said. For example, 88 students and 10 teachers from Knollwood Elementary School in Rapid City, S.D., made the 50-mile trip to Lead for activities and hoist-room tours. And this month, 80 middle schoolers from Belle Fourche, S.D., visited the lab to design and construct their own working hoists in mini-shafts.
In addition to hosting visits to the lab, Education Department staff participated in programs at the Homestake Opera House and at the Homestake Visitor
Center in Lead, and they worked with the Communications Department to arrange videoconferences between students on the surface and scientists underground?including sessions for science students from Wall (S.D.) High School and from Jasper County High School in Georgia.
Career days are traditionally held in spring, and the Education Department tapped other Sanford Lab staff to participate?among them Project Controls Analyst Pam Hamilton, who talked with Rapid City middle schoolers and Brown University physicist James Verbus of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment, who visited Spearfish.
Some of the programs were small. Seven students visited the lab from the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. Six students came from Black Hills Christian Academy. Other events were just for educators, including an in-service for Lead-Deadwood teachers and an underground tour for officers of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota.
Black Hills State University intern Anna Hafele joined the Education Department just in time for the rush. One of her main duties will be compiling statistics from more than 1,000 evaluation forms filled out by participants, with more to come. ?We?re learning as we?re doing these programs,? Sayler said. ?We?re trying to figure how to have the best possible impact.?
Meanwhile, Sanford Lab educators continue reaching out to students with on-site and off-site programs and building relationships with educators in the region and throughout the country.