Members

Here's a chance to earn some volunteer hours, especially for those interested in astronomy, genetics/heredity, and ornithology.

What: The Science Olympiad is a competitive event for teams of Middle and High School students across the United States. (If you've never heard of it, Google "Science Olympiad".) There are 4 or 5 Regional meets across Nebraska each spring and a State meet in April.
When: Saturday, March 14, 2020.
Time: "Afternoon" - About noon until around 4:30 or so (depends on task, ends when scoring is finished).
Where: Regional Science Olympiad at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo& Aquarium, Education Building. People on the Volunteer List will have free admission to the zoo that day (and probably free pizza for lunch).
Contact: See end of message

Details:
First:
Event Supervisors are needed for two afternoon events on March 14th, 2020. An event Supervisor prepares, administers, and scores the event, usually a test with at least some sort of "practical" or hands-on observation or interpretation (depends on the subject). It helps if Supervisors have interest/some familiarity with the topic. Science Olympiad provides a Parameter sheet and online resources for each event. Judy Bouma will bring hard copies of the Event Parameter sheets to the Winter Gathering (couldn't get single-page nice pdf files today). Preparation hours are volunteer hours....

Events needing Supervisors are:
1) Heredity (Middle school)
2) Astronomy (High school)/Reach for the Stars (Middle school)
One Supervisor can cover both Astronomy and Reach for the Stars. They will be staged in the same room at the same time. The middle school event doesn't require as much breadth or depth of coverage of the topic (details in the Parameter sheets).

Second:
General/less specialized volunteering: Non-zoo volunteers can help proctor and score the above events, and also Ornithology. NMN Judy Bouma is the Event Supervisor for Ornithology (both Middle and High school). We will use stations with biofacts and recordings, but no live specimens. Answer keys are provided, so expertise is not needed to help proctor or score.

Contact: If you are interested, please contact Judy (jebouma1@gmail.com) ASAP. Judy will be submitting a list of names and contact information to the person organizing the Regional next week. Judy can answer some questions. (Judy also has Word and pdf files from the 2019 Designer Genes (Senior high version of Heredity) that can be used as templates for the 2020 Heredity event.)

Thank you,

Judy Bouma. NMN - jebouma1@gmail.com
Education Instructor, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium