Search

Local middle schoolers visit INSTAAR to make movies about Earth science

Three young teens hold long metal scientific instruments in a well-lit indoor laboratory. Photo by Gabe Allen, INSTAAR communications specialist.

The ‘Dream Team’ checks out increment borers, used to gather tree core samples in the field, in the Ecohydrology lab at INSTAAR. All photos by Gabe Allen.

Since October, students at Westview Middle School in Longmont have met with INSTAAR scientists nearly every month through the. The goal of the program is to connect local kids with scientists doing impactful work. Holly Barnard, an INSTAAR faculty fellow and Earth Explorers participant, looks forward to the visits for months ahead.

“When I was in middle school, I didn’t even know that earth science was a career path that I could take,” she said. “I really like sharing my research and the story of how I became a scientist.”

Three young teens listen to a middle-aged woman in a black sweater as she holds a slice of a small tree

INSTAAR faculty fellow Holly Barnard takes Earth Explorers participants on a tour of the Ecohydrology Lab.

This year, Barnard is sharing her science with the self-described “Dream Team” — Adriel, Everett, Noah and Ben. Each member of the quartet took part in conducting interviews, filming lab spaces and script writing for a video that they are now editing.

The Dream Team met with Barnard for the first time over Zoom back in October. A couple of weeks later they brainstormed video ideas over lunch with Barnard at the BoulderCenter for Community. Then, in November, they toured her lab and filmed an interview.

Noah was apprehensive about the program at first, but ended up appreciating his time at INSTAAR.

“Originally I didn’t want to do Earth Explorers, but then I found out it was about science. I was like ‘yeah, I could try that,” he said. “All the stuff we’ve done, like walking around campus and learning about trees, has been fun.”

Before leaving for the day, the Dream Team toured INSTAAR’sStable Isotope Lab, where lab manager Bruce Vaughn showed them an ice core that traveled all the way from Greenland to Colorado. For Ben, it was a highlight.

“I thought it was really cool getting to go in the walk-in freezer and getting to see the different ice chunks and learning about how they read those,” Ben said. “It was just really cool getting to see all of the different tools.”

Now that the laboratory tours and field trips are in the rearview, it's time to get to work. This spring, 10 Earth Explorers groups, including the Dream Team, are busy cutting together mini-documentaries for a film screening in May. At the end of it all, scientists, parents, teachers and students will gather at Westview Middle School to learn about INSTAAR’s work through the lens of young minds. With any luck, some of the students might one day look back on this year as the catalyst that began a career in scientific research.

A bald man with white hair and glasses holds up a arm-sized cylinder of pure ice while teens look on with interest

Bruce Vaughn explains how the Stable Isotope Lab processes ice cores from around the world to glean insights into the Earth’s history.

Teens and a scientist huddle around a cylinder of white PVC pipe with metal contraptions inside it. The scientist pours water into the pipe.

Barnard shows the Dream Team a rain gauge in the Ecohydrology Lab.

A young hispanic teen in a black shirt talks with a hispanic female scientist, also in a black shirt, sitting across from him

Barnard is interviewed by Dream Team member Adriel in her office.

If you have questions about this story, or would like to reach out to INSTAAR for further comment, you can contact Senior Communications Specialist Gabe Allen at gabriel.allen@colorado.edu.