Port Aransas South Jetty

'Summer Science' seeks to spark students

KEN DUNTON It drives Ken Dunton nuts when he sees kids who clearly are on summer vacation, and they're slumped in the family minivan, staring at the van's flip-down TV screen rather than marveling at the beautiful countryside they're passing.

And so Dunton, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute (UTMSI), is glad to be part of a team that is establishing a new program to allow children in Port Aransas to take part in a wide variety of field science projects this summer. The program will be conducted by teachers and university students in the outdoors and in classrooms at H.G. Olsen Elementary School and Brundrett Middle School in June and July.

The program will be for children who will be entering third through eighth grades this fall. It is to be a joint effort by Port Aransas ISD, the City of Port Aransas Parks and Recreation Program and UTMSI's GK12 program.

The GK12 program is funded by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. It involves marine science graduate and undergraduate students helping teach science in elementary and middle school classrooms in Port Aransas, Flour Bluff and Austin. Dunton and a colleague at U.T. in Austin are the grant's principal investigators.

Dunton also is a member of the Port Aransas ISD Board of Trustees.

Graduate and undergraduate students at UTMSI will serve as mentors and assistant teachers on field trips conducted by the summer field science program headquartered at Port Aransas schools.

PAISD instructor Marilyn Cook is designing activities for sessions that will take place from 10 a.m. to noon for younger students, probably grades three and four.

Teachers Cliff Strain and Julie Findley are developing activities for a four-hour afternoon session for older students. Strain teaches marine science at Flour Bluff Intermediate School, but he'll be conducting these activities in Port Aransas. Findley is a teacher at Olsen Elementary.

Guest professors from the Port Aransas community will take part in some lessons. Rick Tinnin and John Williams, of UTMSI's Marine Education Services, have volunteered to provide advice on lesson activities.

Sessions will be June 9-13 and 16- 20; and July 7-11 and 21-25.

Subjects to be explored will include life as an oceanographer; seaweeds, seagrasses and salt marshes; bays and beaches; and adaptations and ecology of sea creatures. No decisions have been made about which weeks those sessions will take place.

Students can sign up for one weeklong session at a time.

Field trips will take students into local bays and estuaries, beaches, the Nueces River delta and Fennessey Ranch at Bayside. Kayaking in area marshes also will be involved.

Students will collect and press algae. They'll gather fish and dissect them. They'll take water samples and then use microscopes to view the tiny creatures swimming around in the samples. And a bunch more.

"We want to make a much better effort to help children understand nature and build curiosity," Dunton said. "Here we sit on an island with all this pristine habitat all around us, and too often, kids spend their summers on TVs, video games and computers."

Registration will be done through the Port Aransas Parks and Recreation Department. Officials still are working on nailing down details of exactly when registration will be held and fee amounts. Officials are trying to keep the costs down to about $40 per student per week, Dunton said.

While UTMSI, Parks and Recreation and PAISD are combining resources to make the science camp happen, civic organizations also are being asked for funds to contribute to keep tuition costs down, Dunton said.

The summer field science program is a separate operation from a summer day camp (with games, arts and crafts, sports and other activities) that PAISD will run for incoming kindergarteners and first graders at Olsen Elementary School. And those programs are separate from a summer day camp for incoming third- through fifth-graders that will be run by the Parks and Recreation Department at PAISD.

The three programs do have one thing in common: Folks will be able to register for all of them at once with the Parks and Recreation Department, when the time comes. For information, call the Parks and Recreation Department at 749-4158 or drop by the department's office at 739 W. Avenue A, across the street from the Civic Center.

Parks and Recreation Department Director Gary Mysorski said preregistration likely will be held in mid-May for science camps. Formal registration tentatively is scheduled to begin on June 5 for summer day camps and to fill slots in one or more science camps. Officials have not yet decided whether to hold registration for all of the science program sessions at once or to have registration prior to each session.

Kids don't have to be Port Aransas residents to take part in the field science program or the day camps.