Last week might have been the official kickoff for the 2014-15 Kenan Fellows cohort, but I think today is the day that most of us in the Students Discover cohort have been looking forward to.  Today we made it to our workplace for the next three weeks… the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Check out this awesome badge they gave me…

I’m not gonna lie, I have bragged that one of the highest-highlights of this experience that I’m looking forward to is working in a lab at the museum.

There were some great highlights from the day:

1. We started our day out at Prairie Ridge, an outdoor, hands-on classroom environment, open to the public. We got the chance to do some hands-on science catching some dragonflies and counting them for the scientists monitoring their populations.

2. Had some quality time with my eMammal Teamlet, Stephanie, Kelsie and Dayson. Excited to be working with these fine scientist/educators this summer. Also, got to see the lab I’ll be working in and meet our project director Dr. Roland Kays.

3. After hearing an inspiring kickoff keynote from Dr. Rob Dunn, the principal investigator on our Students Discover grant, we were led down to the basement of the museum for a behind-the-scenes look at how and where the museum’s collection is stored.

Overall, another great day in this program. I’m looking forward to working with Dayson and Kelsie and Stephanie to make this science available to teachers and students in my classroom and teachers and students around the world. It’s going to be a challenge, but a great one.

I wrap up with one last question from an experience recently that plays right into the heart of my cohort’s focus: Why did the peacock cross the road?

I don’t have a great answer, but one peacock scared the bejesus out of my wife while she was driving us to Raleigh this weekend. (I was just as shocked, I just wasn’t driving at the time) It had gotten all the way out to the right lane of Highway 64 and she had to swerve to avoid hitting it. Just goes to show that we interact with the animals around us whether we intend to or not. As scientists, I think we owe it to our selves and society to understand those complex relationships and understandings between animals and humans and the surrounding environment.