A PLACE FOR SCIENCE : GEOSCIENCE OUTREACH UTILIZING COMMUNITY RESOURCES

For three years, undergraduate members of the Eastern Illinois University Geoscience Club, with assistance from faculty of the Geology/Geography Department, have led geoscience education programs at the Charleston Carnegie Public Library for the library’s Kidspace. Our program was developed and integrated into the existing summer reading and monthly crafts programs in order to build the children’s interest in fossils, rocks, and minerals and educate the children on how geoscience is a part of their lives. Financial support for the program was from both the Department of Geology/Geography at EIU and the Library, and the presentations performed by student and faculty volunteers.

By utilizing the libraries space, members, and advertising, we were able to provide community outreach programs to an underserved rural area. The city of Charleston, IL is small, with a population of ~22,000, nearly half of which are affiliated with Eastern Illinois University. There are no natural history facilites education facilites within convenient range, and the universities facilites are neither adequate nor convenient for these types of public outreach. Using a community center as a base for education programs provides a ready audience, and projects and presentation can be tailored to that communities needs and interests. Integrating the program into existing library programs also served as both an introduction of ourselves to this community, and provided a familiar enviroment for the audience, rather than attempting to entice members to something wholly new and unfamiliar.

Our projects were created for minimal lecture with a focus on interactive, exploratory crafts and activities, including digging up fossils and minerals, paper craft crystals and dinosaurs, scavenger hunts, and even coloring. Because our groups often had wide age ranges, the plans had to be simple without being too boring for older kids. Emphasis was made in each program to leave the participants with something to take home-either fossil or mineral samples or crafts made in the program. Though this program specifically serves children, our department has also provided separate education programs for adults through the library as well.