RE Log Fall 2016

FALL 2016 Ransom Everglades LOG 17 Ken Mills Head of the Upper School, former Science Department Chair BA Williams College, MST Rutgers University Before anybody had ever coined the phrase “experiential learning,” Paul Ransom was already doing that, and it’s a tradition we’ve continued – sailing on the bay, hiking in the Adirondacks, exploring the Everglades. We believe the bay, as well as opportuni- ties available in the community, at the University of Miami or FIU, are really an exten- sion of our laboratory opportunities. We already do interesting, cutting-edge things here at Ransom Everglades, but we want to amplify what we’re doing with a new space. Right now we’re sitting in a lab that’s also a classroom; when it’s being used as a classroom it can’t be used as a lab. A new facility would provide teaching spaces that allow us to set up experiments that go not just for 50 minutes, but for several days, a whole semester – maybe even a year or more. That’s something we’re really excited about, anticipating how we might be able to take organisms from the bay, or chemis- try experiments from the University of Miami, and leave them up and running so that we can collect data over a long period of time and not have those projects interrupted, or – even worse – not even started because we have another class coming in in 50 minutes. A smart new facility that has all kinds of flexible space, big labs, small labs, classic classroom spaces, Harkness spaces, a variety of spaces, will be critical to what we envision doing with our students in science. We imagine a science facility being a place where the science students feel at home – just like the students in acting class feel at home in the theater, or the football players feel at home on a football field. We really want to create an environment where the scientists feel comfortable in a true research facility because, ultimately, science is about doing research. It used to be that research was considered the domain of the PhD, but that’s not the case anymore. We have unique resources here at Ransom Everglades with regards to our students and teachers. We can do serious, publishable, award-winning, first-rate research in a facil- ity right here on the grounds of Ransom Everglades, if we only had a building to fully tap into the potential of our students and faculty. We can do serious, publishable, award- winning, first-rate research in a facility right here on the grounds of Ransom Everglades, if we only had a building to fully tap into the potential of our students and faculty.