Janna Sasser is a communications intern with North Carolina Sea Grant. She is a senior at North Carolina State University. <\/em><\/p>\n A quick scan of the granite-columned building on Madison Street, located at the threshold of downtown Whiteville, isn\u2019t too telling. Besides a few conspicuous animal sculptures, the site appears the same as it always has (or at least what I can remember from the past two decades).<\/p>\n One step into the building, however, and I was quick to realize how remarkably the site of the former forestry museum had been transformed. As you probably already know, it\u2019s now the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at Whiteville<\/a>, a branch of the Raleigh-based museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe museum not only looks very different, but its event base, outreach and quality is unprecedented in the area,\u201d notes Kellie Lewis, coordinator of education programs at the Whiteville site.<\/p>\n Take it from a local \u2014 Lewis\u2019 assessment is true. From monthly Teen Science Caf\u00e9 meetings drawing students from as far as Lumberton, to being greeted by the 12-foot skeletal replica of a crocodile ancestor whose fossils were unearthed in Durham, the facility and its outreach is every bit \u201cunprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n The museum features interactive exhibits where visitors of all ages can have hands-on experiences. The focus is specific to the local community.<\/p>\n My first stop: the Investigate Lab, where I measured an alligator skull. Apparently, the length in inches from eyes to nose is approximately the length of the body in feet. Thinking back to the familiar image of an alligator head peering out from the murky waters of the Lake Waccamaw canal, I\u2019d rather have not known that quick calculation.<\/p>\n After poking around the Fossil Lab that houses the bones of a prehistoric giant ground sloth discovered in nearby Hallsboro, I stopped at the Naturalist Center. There I tried out the digital microscope called the Microeye. It projects a magnified image on a screen for easy viewing. Did you know that Lincoln appears on BOTH sides of a penny?<\/p>\n Outside we toured the Nature PlaySpace, which mimics the one at Prairie Ridge Ecostation<\/a>, another museum facility in Raleigh. Kids can balance on logs, roll in the grass, tinker in the herb garden, or play in the mud kitchen \u2014 the messier, the better, it seems.<\/p>\n \u201cThe PlaySpace is designed to help kids feel more comfortable and enjoy nature,\u201d explains Meghan Barron, education specialist at the Whiteville museum.<\/p>\n The facility also offers a stream of family and educational events, and programs for educators. For example, in September, local middle-school classes will be trained to monitor dragonflies in a museum-hosted citizen science project.<\/p>\n Dragonfly Detectives: Introducing Children to Citizen Science is a program started at Prairie Ridge. Coordinators reached out to Whiteville for the third session of the program because of the museum\u2019s proximity to Lake Waccamaw.<\/p>\n The program is part of a three-year project funded by the Student Science Enrichment Program Grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The participants will be visiting Lake Waccamaw for portions of the project.<\/p>\n On June 13, the museum will be hosting BugFest South<\/a>, an outdoor family festival featuring the \u201cRoachingham 500\u201d and the \u201cArthropod Olympics.\u201d If one event should surely draw a crowd, it\u2019s cockroach races.<\/p>\n The museum also will hold a seasonal workshop for educators, Signs of Fall on Your School Grounds, where educators can discover resources and educational materials that exist in the natural world right outside their classroom door. The workshop is offered three times throughout the school year, and is sponsored in part by PNC Grow Up Great.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we\u2019re in a position where we\u2019re capable of catering to specific pilot studies,\u201d Lewis says. \u201cThe goal of Raleigh\u2019s museum is to reach every county in the state, and our branch facility provides proximity and accessibility for this region, and the advantage of \u2018locals\u2019 on community influence.\u201d<\/p>\n The new site could be a model. \u201cMuseum outreach like this has never been done, and many are looking at the success of this program,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n Fellow southeastern North Carolinians, if you haven\u2019t already done so, check out what\u2019s going on at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Whiteville. I assure you, you will be surprised \u2014 and proud.<\/p>\n Visit naturalsciences.org\/whiteville<\/a> <\/em>for details. <\/em>For upcoming events, follow the museum on Facebook at www.facebook.com\/NCMNSWhiteville<\/a> <\/em>or contact Kellie Lewis at kellie.lewis@naturalsciences.org<\/a> or Meghan Barron at meghan.barron@naturalsciences.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Janna Sasser, a North Carolina Sea Grant communications intern, visits a childhood haunt in Whiteville \u2014 and finds that a lot of things have changed since she was last there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currents"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"An](\"\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/playspace.jpg\")
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