Voyage

Rallying Your Community

  Case for Siting Voyage: University  

If Voyage is sited on campus, there are many approaches for putting it to work. Here are a few:

  • Voyage offers an opportunity for community outreach, and a sustainable collaboration on programs across relevant schools and departments, e.g., the departments of physics, astronomy, and geology, the school of engineering and the school of education.
  • Instructors can provide tours of Voyage to non-science major classes in astronomy, geology, and general science; and to majors in the physical sciences and engineering. Tours provide a wonderful context for content covered in particularly the non-science major courses.
  • Instructors can use Voyage lessons as part of non-science major courses in astronomy, and in support of pre- and post-tour activities.
  • An entire non-science major course can be built around the Voyage exhibition and the Voyage lessons. The curriculum could be shared with other colleges and universities with an exhibition on their campus.
  • An ‘explainers program’ can be created where majors in the physical sciences and engineering departments, and in the school of education, are trained to give tours on campus for local area elementary, middle, and high school classes. It’s a great introduction to campus for prospective students, and the tour guides serve as exceptional role models. Becoming a tour guide might also fulfill a community outreach requirement for an undergraduate student.
  • Training for tour guides can be done jointly by a member of the school of education and member of one of the content departments. The training can be based on the tour and activity brochures, the grade K-13 lessons, and the professional development workshops that have already been developed for Voyage.
  • University educators and researchers can provide regular professional development for the community's grade K-12 teachers on a suite of Voyage lessons that can be used before and after an on-site tour of the exhibition, and are comprehensive enough to be used by the school district as some or all of their space science curriculum.
  • Tours can be conducted on weekends for the public, together with a presentation by a researcher on relevant research conducted at the university.
  • Public and or family evenings can be held regularly, with a tour of the exhibition, family science activities, a talk on Solar System exploration by a researcher, and night viewing of the sky. This could be advertised to the public, or done as a family field trip for area schools.
  • A high school explainers program can be created where area high school students are recruited and trained to provide public tours throughout the summer.