TRAINING FOR FIELD WORK: A BADLANDS "BOOTCAMP" IN ROCKFORD, IOWA

In 1997, the Science Museum of Minnesota's Youth Science Center began an educational program for Jr/Sr high school students in which we develop projects related to local geology and paleontology in order to develop their skills. More recently, our program has expanded with the development of the Youth Science Center Field School (YSCFS) concept. The YSCFS was recently awarded a 3-year grant from Lucent Technologies to fund inquiry-based learning in earth science. Since its inception the YSCFS has developed 12 sites within a 10 hour radius of the Twin Cities area that range in age from Ordovician to Paleocene.

Students are instructed in various areas of field work and collecting of specimens throughout the year and have the option to attend several summer trips to the Badlands of North Dakota for field work/research. They are selected on their interest level and performance and are then taken to Rockford, Iowa for preliminary field training. The Rockford Brick and Tile pit contains Devonian age fossils and is a dead ringer for a scaled down version of badlands topography.

Stations are set up at various locations throughout the quarry and students must successfully demonstrate different skills, from using a GPS unit to making a field jacket and carrying it out with them. Casts of bones are strewn around to teach fossil surveying skills, photography and map making, as well as land navigation exercises. Once a student has successfully completed the "bootcamp" they are ready to move on to the actual summer field work.

The YSCFS students that complete this training are assets to the field crew and require little supervision when in the field. The "bootcamp" has been very successful and has added properly collected and documented specimens to the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Pioneer Trail Regional Museum in Bowman, North Dakota. This presentation will demonstrate how to set up and begin your own program and keep a student's interest in earth science active.