Posted June 5, 2015
Janna Sasser is a communications intern with North Carolina Sea Grant. She is a senior at North Carolina State University.
Visitors enjoy the Bear’s Lair, a PlaySpace feature distinct to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences at Whiteville.
A quick scan of the granite-columned building on Madison Street, located at the threshold of downtown Whiteville, isn’t 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).
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’s now the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at Whiteville, a branch of the Raleigh-based museum.
“The museum not only looks very different, but its event base, outreach and quality is unprecedented in the area,” notes Kellie Lewis, coordinator of education programs at the Whiteville site.
Take it from a local — Lewis’ assessment is true. From monthly Teen Science Café 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 “unprecedented.”
The museum features interactive exhibits where visitors of all ages can have hands-on experiences. The focus is specific to the local community.
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’d rather have not known that quick calculation.
Researchers took two decades to reconstruct the skeletal remains of Postosuchus, unveiled in March at UNC-Chapel Hill. The original fossils were unearthed in 1994.
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?
Outside we toured the Nature PlaySpace, which mimics the one at Prairie Ridge Ecostation, 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 — the messier, the better, it seems.
“The PlaySpace is designed to help kids feel more comfortable and enjoy nature,” explains Meghan Barron, education specialist at the Whiteville museum.
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.
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’s proximity to Lake Waccamaw.
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.
On June 13, the museum will be hosting BugFest South, an outdoor family festival featuring the “Roachingham 500” and the “Arthropod Olympics.” If one event should surely draw a crowd, it’s cockroach races.
Meghan Barron (left) and Kellie Lewis are involved in the museum’s outreach and education programs.
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.
“Right now, we’re in a position where we’re capable of catering to specific pilot studies,” Lewis says. “The goal of Raleigh’s museum is to reach every county in the state, and our branch facility provides proximity and accessibility for this region, and the advantage of ‘locals’ on community influence.”
The new site could be a model. “Museum outreach like this has never been done, and many are looking at the success of this program,” she adds.
Fellow southeastern North Carolinians, if you haven’t already done so, check out what’s going on at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Whiteville. I assure you, you will be surprised — and proud.
Visit naturalsciences.org/whiteville for details. For upcoming events, follow the museum on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NCMNSWhiteville or contact Kellie Lewis at kellie.lewis@naturalsciences.org or Meghan Barron at meghan.barron@naturalsciences.org.
