Paleobotany Outreach

The Division of Paleobotany is committed to broadening outreach about its research to a diverse public audience at multiple levels of education. To this end, we are involved in a number of activities including:

• teaching and mentoring of women and students from underrepresented groups;
• mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows;
• support of outreach programs at the KU Natural History Museum;
• workshops for middle school girls in science via the Expanding Your Horizons Program, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS;
• summer workshops through the KU TRIO program at KU;
• workshops and field trips with gifted students from Auburn-Washburn public schools, Topeka; and
• presentations to K-12 students in the Lawrence school district.

These interactions with both the students and their teachers have led to increasing public awareness of not only what we do, but we hope that these types of interactions instill a sense of discovery so that some of these students will build on these experiences to further their education in some area of science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

We also provide tours of our extensive collections of fossil plants to members of the community, as well as hosting colleagues from around the world.