Outreach 2023

In 2023, our researchers and staff listed 90 specific outreach activities, including programs that involved multiple days or site visits; of these, 58 were connected with the KU Field Station.

In a typical year, our research center engages in several broad categories of educational outreach activity. These include guest lectures, teaching assistance, nonacademic presentations, field trips and informational educational activities. Through this activity, we reach out to KU groups, schools, and local, regional, state and national groups and institutions. Several researchers work closely on an ongoing basis with Haskell Indian Nations University classes.

We also welcome visitors come to the KU Field Station public trails and Native Medicinal Plant Research Garden—open dawn to dusk every day throughout the year. We hold annual public tours at the garden and at the Field Station's Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve, usually twice a year.

In addition, we host Friday Ecology Seminars, many open to the public, during the spring and fall semesters (these are not counted in the numbers above). The public can access our YouTube channel, where we have posted a variety of educational videos, including recordings from the Friday seminars.

Monarch Watch, an internationally renowned program administered through our research center, conducts extensive contentwide outreach through its monarch tagging and Monarch Waystation programs and holds three annual events enjoyed by the local community: the spring pollinator plant sale, the fall open house and the fall monarch tagging event. Only these three events and one other event are counted in the numbers in this section.

Two programs led by Peggy Schultz, a researcher at our center and a faculty member in the KU Environmental Studies Program, deserve special mention:

• Schultz developed the Ecosystems of Kansas Summer Institute, held at the KU Field Station and other sites, as an outreach component of the five-year, $20M National Science Foundation EPSCoR MAPS (Microbiomes of Aquatic, Plant and Soil Systems) program, a collaboration among five Kansas universities. During the program's first four years, it was held for one full week for secondary science teachers in Kansas, providing them an opportunity for them to work with KU scientists to learn about current research and methods that link to K-12 science standards. More than a dozen scientists from our research center have participated as instructors. During this fifth and final year, a three-day program was held for middle school teachers in June. This program will be continued through our own research center's funding.

• Also as part of the NSF-funded MAPS program, Schultz developed the Kansas Ecology for Elementary Students program, bringing teams of scientists, including KU graduate students, into area classrooms to provide hands-on experimentally driven activities. In 2023 the teams worked with approximately 250 students, conducting lessons in both English and Spanish. They visited each classroom multiple times.

The 2023 calendar year also was the first full year of regular public programming at the KU Field Station, following the 2022 creation of the position of education program coordinator for the Field Station, which has brought about greatly expanded opportunities for public engagement there. In addition to many season-specific activities and hosting visiting small groups, programs include the Science Sundays series, held once a month at the Field Station's Armitage Education Center.

The examples of activities listed below are intended to provide a sense of the variety of outreach we carry out.

• Sara Baer, director, and Ted Harris, assistant research professor, gave an online service presentation on Kansas Biological Survey programs for the Kansas Water Authority, with about 50 attendees.
• Sharon Billings, senior scientist, Dean's Professor and University Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and her lab organized, designed and hosted an ongoing webinar series, “Expanding Critical Zone Science,” that featured two invited speakers each semester from universities in the U.S. and other countries. The webinars focused on short science narratives and asked speakers to devote equal time to sharing their ideas on how to expand participation in Critical Zone science. The webinars drew approximately 100 participants in 2023.
• Craig Freeman, senior scientist and senior curator at KU's R.L. McGregor Herbarium, helped lead multiple prairie tours at the Kansas Native Plant Society Annual Wildflower Weekend in Saline County, Kan.
• Jude Kastens, associate research professor, created a map poster of the Kansas River Watershed at the request of Free State Brewery (Lawrence) for their use at the Beers of the Kaw annual fundraising event.
• Dan Reuman, senior scientist and professor of EEB, along with other authors, wrote a post, Green sturgeon in California: Hidden lives revealed from long-term tracking, for the California WaterBlog, which covers issues related to water in California and has more than 14,000 subscribers.
• Maggie Wagner, associate scientist and associate professor of EEB, gave a talk titled Do plants and microbes help each other adapt to drought? at a Virtual Science Café hosted by the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

Among the many outreach activities taking place through the Field Station, in addition to the Science Sundays series talks, were:

• A talk given by Sheena Parsons, station manager, along with artist Janine Antoni and three other KU speakers through the STEAM Series at Sunflower Outdoor & Bike in Lawrence. The talk, "Communing with the Land: How the arts, ecology, and architecture meet along the path," drew 80 attendees.
• Tours of the Fitch Natural History Reservation during Kansas Herpetological Society meeting, which drew 54 participants..
• American Woodcock display flight viewing at Armitage Center on two dates in March, drawing 22 participants.
• Tabling at career fairs at Shawnee Heights High School and Robinson School, both in Topeka, Kan., which totaled nearly 400 attendees.
• A native plant seed cleaning event, held jointly with two other organizations in January, drawing 66 attendees.
• "Night sounds" listening events on two early spring evenings, drawing 33 participants.