Radio Script
2003

The Anchorage, Alaska, Imaginarium Science Center sends educators to schools around the state to get students interested in science. Here, students learn principles of flight by launching rockets, flying airplanes and blowing up hot air balloons. (Courtesy The Imaginarium.)

Kid Science
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INTRO: You might think kids living in Alaska's far-flung villages wouldn't be all that interested in science. Well, you'd be wrong. As Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, one Alaska-based science center recently took science on the road, so to speak, to remote Inupiaq Eskimo villages along the state's Arctic Coast.

STORY: Calling it a science road show is a bit of a stretch in a state with so few actual roads. And since organizers had to charter an airplane just to get to the villages they visited, it might be better to call it a science air show. Amy Vondiest is an outreach educator with The Imaginarium, an Anchorage-based science center. She says assemblies and lessons planned for eight village schools in northern Alaska this spring focus on how things fly, in keeping with the importance of air travel in this vast, mostly roadless state.

VONDIEST: "Basically it covers the four forces you need for a successful flight. So we shoot off rockets to demonstrate how much thrust you need, and we throw Frisbees and we have a huge hot air balloon that we inflate. It's fun to bring all these different things that fly. We have a little airplane with an engine that flies around the room and hits the wall. All the kids love it."

Vondiest and other educators from The Imaginarium have so far visited Inupiaq Eskimo students in Atqasuk and Wainwright, two remote villages along the Arctic Coast. There, they conducted a school assembly as well as taught hands-on lessons to every grade level, from kindergarten to high school.

Educators next will travel to other remote Native villages, including Kaktovik, Barrow, Nuiqsut, and Point Lay, hauling along with them nearly 800 pounds of model rockets, balloons, microscopes and other teaching props. Educators also plan to visit the village of Point Hope later this month, and then Anaktuvuk Pass. Science educator Amy Vondiest says she has but one goal in mind—hooking Alaska's Native kids on science.

VONDIEST: "My main goal is to give the kids a really good appreciation for science or just capture their interest [in science]. Because we're working with the younger kids and the high schoolers and giving them something that they might really enjoy and get into to keep them coming back to science."

The Imaginarium's outreach effort is funded by a four-year $475,000 curriculum development grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, established by the estate of billionaire aviator and philanthropist Howard Hughes. Hughes is remembered most for his construction of a huge wooden cargo plane called the Spruce Goose. ConocoPhillips petroleum company paid travel and freight charges to deliver the program to the schools. Jennifer Donovan is a spokesperson for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

DONOVAN: "Most of what we do is biomedical research. But we do a great deal in the area of science education, about 100 million dollars a year in science education projects, because we are concerned about public science literacy and about getting the next generation of Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators excited about science."

Some of that money has funded other science education projects in Alaska. Most recently the Pratt Museum in Homer received a grant to place cameras on a remote seabird nesting site so visitors could watch and learn about the area's marine life. Back in Wainwright, Jennifer Donovan said the Imaginarium's traveling science show also included a festival for the entire village.

DONOVAN: "I'm amazed at how interested the kids and the whole community gets in the science. In the evening they have a community science festival. Everybody is invited. Kids were showing their parents and relatives how to do their science projects. They were looking through microscopes; they were trying to find out how many marbles could float in a little boat before it sank. They were really into it. It's wonderful to see."

Mark Hertle is a grant administrator with the institute. His hope is that outreach projects like this may inspire Alaska's Native students to pursue careers in science.

HERTLE: "All kids need a good, solid understanding of science. It's increasingly relevant to every child. They are going to have to make decisions that are critical to their lives. The other main goal is that we want all Americans to be participants in science as a career option. We need all those cultures and perspectives represented in science. I think Native Alaskans, it's safe to say, are probably the most underrepresented minority in the science enterprise. So their perspectives aren't represented, and the ways they would approach a problem aren't."

This is Arctic Science Journeys Radio, a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. I'm Doug Schneider.

Thanks to the following individual for help preparing this script:

The Imaginarium
737 West 5th Avenue #G
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
Phone: 907-276-3179
http://www.imaginarium.org/

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Related websites

The Imaginarium

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Alaska

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