When I was first hired at the university as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer, I was expected to conduct and publish new research on biological control, teach occasional classes, and monitor college and graduate students through their projects. However, I soon took over curatorship of the Arthropod Collection, which I renamed the Arthropod Museum, and was assigned the task of writing and administering 4-H and FFA state entomology tests, with a lot of help from faculty and staff. Soon I was spending a fair amount of my time at the university, and outside it as well, doing K-12 entomology outreach in a program I shared with my associate at New Mexico Cooperative Extension. We made a very good team and I can say that when she retired they had to replace her with two people! She was amazing! She could find resources at odd places in the spur of the moment and developed programs almost overnight. I learned to give presentations during this period (1983-2011) that could, in the right circumstances, get me an appreciative audiance and at one point got me a standing ovation from several classes of middle schoolers when they were hungry! It could also fall flat as when I gave a presentation to a middle school audiance and got no reaction at all. The teacher told me afterward that the class was actually heavy in local gang members and that the gang leaders had signaled the students to give no response! Generally our presentations worked well and we even developed a curriculum, originally for 4-H entomology, but which we gave to teachers, curators and outreach personnel from around the country who attended our workshops at the now defunct Invertebrates in Captivity Conference, sponsored by the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute (SASI) at Tucson and later Rio Rico in Arizona. We did two workshops on the use of the curriculum and both times had a full class.
My associate giving a talk for the entomology workshop at Rio Rico, Arizona, Invertebrates in Captivity Conference.
As a research entomologist who occasionally taught advanced classes in systematics, I had never thought that I would be involved in public and private school teaching, but there was definitely a need and I joined with my Extension colleague to meet it very early in my career. As I noted, I had been appointed to write and administer the FFA and 4H state entomology contests and of course my colleague in extension was heavily involved. It was only natural that I would myself become involved in other types of outreach. We had several hundred students come to the Arthropod Museum each year for scheduled programs and we usually served several thousand more at their schools around Las Cruces and special outreach presentations in places like Truth or Consequences and Alamogordo, among others. We also set up exhibits at the Southern New Mexico State Fair and the State Fair in Albuquerque. At the state fair we set up a kiosk,designed and built by one of our staff members, with exhibits of live insects, spiders, scorpions and myriapods for two years. One of my assistants put together a series of aquaria with aquatic insects and we had tarantulas, black widow spiders, violin spiders, walking sticks, whip scorpions, darkling beetles, praying mantids and others.To those exhibits we got usually 10,000 or more visitors. All in all the entomology outreach program was a great success, and we were very proud of it..
At the Southern New Mexico State Fair in 2009 we set up a series of exhibits in World War II quonset huts in cooperation with several other university departments. Our entomology group got a brightly painted hut (red!) that the fair administration had refurbished for the purpose. My associate made giant plastic and cardboard models of several arthropods to decorate the entrance. It was a great hit!
One of the WW II quonset huts we used for the Year of Science in 2009. My Extension associate made the giant insects and arachnids decorating the top front, from a vinegaroon to a black widow spider, a grasshopper, a tarantula hawk and a sphinx moth caterpillar.
We had a number of exhibits that we used regularly for outreach presentations exhibited at the Fair.
Each and every excursion was an adventure. One time I went in to set up a FFA contest and found the room an inch deep in water. I then had to find another room within an hour and set up the contest. With a lot of after hours help from several people I managed to get the contest set up on time! Another time I tripped on a concrete discontinuity and scattered specimens, including a live scorpion, over the sidewalk. The show went on anyway. One time we set up at the Oklahoma State Fair Grounds in association with a regional scientific meeting and ran a Fear Factor booth. At the first stop the student had to endure having a mealworm dropped on their hand. At the second step they had to put their hand in a plastic container full of mealworms. At the third step they had a hissing cockroach dropped on their hand. At the fourth step they had to put one hand into a container full of hissing cockroaches. Finally at my station they had to eat a fried cricket. I don’t know how many fried crickets I ate that day to demonstrate that it was perfectly safe. The kids got a sticker for going through the whole series. One little boy came to the table and asked what he needed to do. I said “eat a fried cricket.” He left in disgust. Next a little girl asked me what she needed to do to get her sticker. I gave her the same answer. “Is that all?” she said and bolted the cricket down! She got her sticker! So much for stereotypes!
One time I visited a gifted preschool and found myself bombarded with questions that I rarely got from second graders! I regularly visited one Catholic school and the presentation was always well received and appreciated. At a more fundamentalist Protestant school one student gave me some trouble when I asked them why insects never get more than a foot long and if they do reach that size then are very thin. He said “Because God made them that way,” rather than telling me the physical reason, which involves their breathing system (a series of tubes throughout the body) and their need to molt their entire exoskeleton. I never talked down to the students, but tried to keep the grade level in mind so that I did not overwhelm them.
For the Year of Science (2009) I gave several presentations dressed as an older Darwin. It was, after all, the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species! I talked to my dean about this in regard to its possible negative reception as a public function, but he said, we are an institution of higher education. We don’t soft peddle reality! The Dean also got funding for a man to give a presentation as a younger Darwin. I have since played the older Darwin several times, in both New Mexico and Washington state, and have yet to have any problems with an audiance. See: www.dailykos.com/…
Entomology is a subject that is not in the vocabulary of very many adults. If they think of them at all, they think of them as pestiferous, such as house flies, or dangerous, such as “Killer Bees.” Often they are considered as dirty creatures that must be killed. Outreach provides a more enlightened appraisement of these six-legged organisms and their relatives, including their roles in pollination of crops, control of other insects, food for birds, mammals, reptiles and fish, beautiful inspirations for the arts, and fascinating objects for study. In fact, insects and their relations are vital to life on earth and recently headlines about the reductions in their numbers was alarming to the scientific community and should be to the general public. Through entomological outreach my associate and I were able to make insects more interesting and less threatening.
To me outreach in general is a vital function of higher education and a way to give K-12 students enrichment that will lead to a better understanding of the planet on which they live. It is also mostly fun and exciting. Any attempt to water down or soft pedal reality beyond using language that is age appropriate is anathema to any teacher and we were supported in this by our administration. We were not K-12 teachers of any sort, but my associate and I provided a little extra to the study of biological sciences, as well as other subjects we managed to sneak in, such as mathematics, art and writing. This was useful to the local teachers and the program was very popular, which gave the Museum another important function, beside college instruction, identification services and research.
Scientia vincere tenebras!
Note: My former extension partner read this essay and added a few very important ideas. As always she improves anything she touches!
