Students share biology project with children in the community

Cornell College students in the biology class Wildlife & People were presented with a challenge during Block 4 of 2016.Professor Tammy Mildenstein asked them to choose a conservation problem and spend the block learning about it. As part of their final project, they had to take action to actually help fix the problem.

Lauren Adams ’19 and Tegan Shelton ’19 decided to take their project to children at a nearby elementary school and early education center. They wanted to educate the students about a bird called the Guam Kingfisher.

“Our main goal through all of it is to educate people because we think that’s the biggest thing,” Shelton said. “Most people don’t even know about the Kingfisher.”

“Because we were researching zoos and because these birds were extinct in the wild and only left in zoos, we thought it would be a really cool thing to educate students,” Adams said. “So, we put together a little book and coloring page that we brought into each school. We read the book to the children, taught them a little bit about zoos and Kingfishers, and had them color the page. It was really fun.”

The group also contacted zoos throughout the course of the project that didn’t have any educational material about the bird. They are sending their booklets to those who would like a copy. They also contacted two elementary schools in Guam and plan to send those students the booklet too.

Watch the video to learn more about their project: