Natural Science Museum opens to curious public

The Natural Science Museum opened to the public last Friday in Herty Hall.

“It’s been a long time coming and a welcomed addition by the public and Georgia College & State University,” said biology professor Dennis Parmley. “I’ve had many calls from surrounding schools interested in touring.”

Graduate student Alex Kittle gives tours at the museum and was pleased with the turn out for Friday’s open house of the Natural Science Museum. He said overall groups of teachers and parents from the Science Fair were impressed by the museum and some of the teachers plan to bring their Zoology, Biology and Earth Science classes to visit the museum.

“Friday was a chance for us to let teachers from surrounding communities know what our department has to offer,” said Kittle.

The official opening of the museum for GC&SU students and faculty was in November 2004. Some professors have already taken advantage of the museum.

Biology professor Harriett Whipple said the museum is a useful tool to help students apply what they learn in class.

“It’s a great learning environment where students can see what is in the text,” said Whipple.

Since November numerous groups have stopped by, including, biology classes, museum history classes and Community Action Team for Service (CATS), said Kittle.

“The floor plan is for school groups, starting with fossils and ending with the last ice age,” said Kittle. “Our first group to tour was foster kids.”

The displays are arranged so many people can view the displays simultaneously. Kittle said docents walk around the museum to help explain what the visitors are seeing.

Many of the pieces on display were collected by GC&SU professors and students. Credit is given to those who share their findings by giving some information about the faculty member and excavation in the display cases.

Parmley said it is important for people to realize that the artifacts shown in the museum are state property, not from individual collections.

“It’s not a donation, it’s just a sampling of the collection from Gordon Late Eocene fossil site collected by biology faculty and students,” said Parmley.

The hard work of everyone involved is now being rewarded with positive feedback from the surrounding community.

“It took 20 years to amass the collection, but only about half a semester to get everything up,” said Kittle.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 11 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry