Value added - USG serves Georgia [Mar. 2008]

VALUE ADDED: USG Serves Georgia

March 2008

Driving Science Fun to Georgia's Children

Mile after mile, Georgia State University's BioBus keeps bringing smile after smile to the faces of children in North Central and Western Georgia.
Since its inception in 1999, the colorfully painted science lab on wheels has made more than 850 visits to schools and community organizations in 24 counties. In the process, the Bio-Bus team has shared science with more than 70,000 Pre-K-12 students in ways the kids never imagined.
"The kids are generally excited and a little intimidated at first," says Dana Brown, the bus' lab coordinator and a graduate student in geology. "The best part is hearing that they have never considered science a fun subject and watching their eyes light up."
The program offers 10 teaching modules, including states of matter, microbes, biotechnology, forensics and animal diversity. The team recently stretched its coverage east to Savannah, where it gave students at Sol C. Johnson High School a chance to finger a "perp" through its hands-on forensics module.
"The students really enjoyed the forensics lab," says Derrick Muhammad, Johnson High principal. "The lesson taught a lot of genetics content and made the activity fun in the process. The instructors did a wonderful job."

Barbara Baumstark, biology professor and BioBus director, is proud of the program's success especially that it's a teacher-driven program, she says. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect to her, she says, is the program's accessibility. Previously funded by the National Science Foundation, Georgia State now picks up the tab to keep the bus rolling.
Baumstark will add a little fuel to the program this year, thanks to $5,000 she received from the Regents' Excellence in Teaching Award she won for her role as Bio-Bus director. Baumstark plans to donate the money to the program.
"The fact that we can offer our services for free means that we can serve those schools that need extra science attention the most but can least afford to pay for it," she notes. Q

VALUE ADDED USG Serves Georgia

Crude Corral

Headline-making catastrophes like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the Alaskan coast only contribute a fraction about 5 percent of the petroleum contaminating the world's oceans every year.

Far more common and just as damaging to the environment are small-vessel sinkings like that of the Brunswick, Ga.-based shrimp boat "Captain Jack" in March 2007. Even routine boat maintenance changing oil, cleaning bilges and emptying ballasts accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world's waterway petroleum pollution, according to the 1995 Smithsonian Institute exhibit "Ocean Planet."

To help reduce oil pollution

in Georgia's coastal waters, the University of Georgia's Marine

The Captain Jack in March 2007, surrounded by MAREX bilge socks.

Extension Service (MAREX) designed an educational program to help boat owners lower their polluting potential by using bilge socks.

pilot boat owners, as well as recreational boat owners along the Georgia coast.

Called "Stick a Sock in It," the program provides workshops for using the socks, which look like floating sausage links and absorb the oil, diesel and gasoline that can leak from an onboard engine into a boat's bilge the compartment when water collects and keep the petroleum's tell-tale shiny, toxic sheen from

"We want to educate people and show them ways to be environmentally conscious, and bilge socks are convenient," said Paul Christian, who manages the MAREX program in Brunswick. "They trap hazardous materials so they don't escape into the environment, and you can throw them away in the regular trash when they're full."

contaminating the environment.

In response to an increase in small-vessel

"Bilges and what's in them are one of those out-of-sight, out-of-mind things, and people are often unaware there's a problem, because the bilge pump is controlled automatically," said Joe Tinsman, owner of Fuel Management Services in

sinkings, MAREX also distributed six emergency oil-spill-containment kits to marinas along the Georgia coast in February 2007. Only a month later, two of the kits were used during the sinking of the "Captain Jack."

Brunswick. He received two cases of the socks

"Stick a Sock in It" is supported by a grant

from MAREX and has been giving them away to his from the Environmental Protection Agency's

customers when he notices fuel leaks in their bilges. Environmental Protection Division. For more

Between April 2004 and December 2006, MAREX hosted 45 bilge-sock workshops and

information, contact Christian at 912-264-7336 or pchristi@uga.edu Q

distributed nearly 7,000 free socks to research This article first appeared in University of Georgia

vessels, commercial shrimp boat, tug boat and Outreach magazine, Winter 2008.