An educational outreach program sponsored by Benedictine University’s Jurica Nature Museum will be able to reach out a bit further in 1998.
The Lisle-based natural history museum, which attracts 5,000 visitors annually, recently received a grant for just under $5,000 from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to further develop its environmental education programs for elementary school pupils and teachers.
The grant will be used for a project that will focus on the biodiversity of northeastern Illinois and the effects that environmental changes have on animals, according to Mary Mickus, education coordinator for Jurica Nature Museum.
“Right now, we have about 21 `Discovery Boxes’ of educational materials and museum specimens that we lend to teachers in the area for use in the classroom,” Mickus said. “This grant will allow us to put together five or six more boxes and also to enhance the existing boxes with educational materials on biodiversity.
“We mostly will be looking at smaller mammals, reptiles and amphibians, like snakes and turtles, and introduce material explaining how and why scientists study these `indicator species’ in the environment to determine the health of the environment.”
The grant will allow the museum to produce field trip activity sheets that will present environmental problems for younsters to ponder as they tour the facility, Mickus said. Grant funds also will be used to sponsor teachers’ workshops on Illinois biodiversity issues in February at the museum, which is housed in Benedictine University’s Scholl Science Center.
The museum was one of 25 groups or programs out of a field of more than 160 applicants to receive the statewide environmental education grants.
According to Mickus, the recent IEPA grant is the third that the museum has received since 1993. Previous grants also were in the $5,000 range.
“We have been very fortunate,” Mickus said. “We used the first grant to establish our Discovery Box outreach program, and we used a 1995 grant to develop our bird collection.”
The museum, staffed largely by Benedictine University students, features an eclectic array of exhibits, including an egg display, a large African savanna display and dioramas depicting a salt marsh, mangrove swamp, North American desert and other natural areas.
Notable Nature Museum visitors during the past year included former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who spoke at Benedictine in May as part of the university’s Great Issues-Great Ideas Lecture Series. As part of her tour of the campus, Thatcher stopped by the museum, where she nearly was snagged by the horns of a stuffed musk ox.
