How We Conducted a Wider Opportunity,
Nebraska Rocks!! - July 2000
- What is a "Wider Op"?
- Why a Wider Op
- Time Line
- Suggestions for a Proposal to a local GSUSA Council
- Some of Our Activities
- Working Towards a Diverse Group of Girls
What is a "Wider Op"?
A Wider Opportunity is a program aimed at Juniors and/or Cadettes (14-18 years old) and is developed by a Girl Scouts, U.S.A. (GSUSA) council (a collection of troops) that lasts from a few days to a few weeks. They are advertised by the GSUSA and sanctioned by them.
Why a Wider Op?
The Lincoln Chapter of AWG conducted a Girl Scouts U.S.A. Wider Opportunity for 35 girls in cooperation with our local Girl Scout Council, the Homestead Council, in July 2000: "Nebraska Rocks!!". The plan began on a long car ride to an AWG board meeting between Jane Voorhies and Mary Anne Holmes. Jane was largely responsible, with Janet Wright, for conducting a Wider Opportunity in 1994, "I Dig Nebraska", Mary Anne had participated, and we agreed that:
- Girl Scouts provide the insurance, all of the safety information you need, and most importantly, a pool of girls who are pre-disposed to outdoor activity.
- A Wider Op is a great way to interest girls in the Geosciences because
- We have the girls as a captive audience for up to two weeks
- We can take them to our favorite geologic/paleontologic spots and effuse our native enthusiasm
- The girls can do so many things in the field that are hands-on, from digging up and rudimentally identifying fossils, to identifying sedimentary layers, grain sizes, sedimentary structures, to measuring strike and dip, to finding themselves on topographic maps-the possibilities are endless.
- Girl Scouts and AWG make a perfect marriage for this type of 'summer camp': the local council took care of food, transportation, and housing, while AWG members provided the program.
We returned home and held a local chapter meeting, a brown-bag lunch, and invited other women we thought might be interested in participating. Most of the planning on AWG's part came from three members, with two additional members providing input during our weekly lunch meetings. Weekly brown-bag lunches are a long-standing tradition with our chapter, and certainly are not necessary to conduct all of the planning necessary for a Wider Op. The local Council held monthly meetings, beginning about a year before the Wider Op was held, and this is probably adequate for the AWG participants as well.
| Month |
Pre-First Year |
First Year |
Second Year |
Third Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
January |
|
Propose draft plan to local Council |
Posted a web site (that no selected participant ever saw!)
|
*Committee meets and selects participants and alternates *Notify girls |
February |
|
Contacted local Councils and high schools to encourage minority applicants |
*Selected and notified graduate student "Science Counselors" *Finalize a Safety Wise person |
|
March |
|
Our council board met and approved the plan |
|
Three mailings to girls over this time: notice of deposit due; health forms; clothing lists; equipment lists |
April |
|
*We reserved the bus for transport at this time with a deposit *Met with canoeing outfitters (UNL Campus Rec) for safety info and to plan "Shakedown" canoe trip |
||
May |
|
Council prepares proposal to GSUSA; they will need a tentative budget and what the program will cost each girl |
Finalized contents and schedule for "Blitz Course" |
|
June |
|
"Shakedown" field trips Reserve housing GSUSA mails out Wider Op brochure to Councils |
|
|
July |
|
Wider Op! |
||
August |
|
Council submits proposal to GSUSA Wrote and submitted proposal for funding to AWGF |
Assess outcome: girls' reactions, Scout leaders', |
|
September |
|
|
|
Party! |
October |
Brainstorm a plan (Note Council has until August of following year to submit proposal; you can "brainstorm" and propose in early First Year |
Proposal, funding from a UNL agency |
Call for applications for graduate student "Science Counselors" |
|
November |
GSUSA notifies Council of approval |
|
||
December |
|
Girls' applications due; disperse applications to committee members |
|
Burgundy indicates what AWG folks did
Green indicates what local Girl Scout council did
Suggestions for a Proposal to a local GSUSA Council
- Have 1 or 2-3 plans to choose from; maps, sketch calendar are helpful.
- Have one or up to three localities total; a different locality each day requires too much time packing, unpacking, bus travel.
- Have a companion van that hauls food and can make emergency runs (injured girl, bus breakdown, grocery shopping)
- Plan to spend several days at each locality, with activities for each day; these can be half-day activities, with patrols alternating
- After first two days, you need not fill each day with activities
- Leave evenings free for Scouts Own, journaling, giggling, kapers, skit planning, skits
- About every 5 days, have a day off
- It's ok to be pure geology, but you can also engage other types of scientists, mathematicians, engineers
- It's ok to have male scientists/engineers
- Make activities hands-on, where the girls do something to discover a principal. Leave time for re-coup, summary.
- AWGF and/or other foundations may be interested in funding your Wider Op.
- We used local funding sources to purchase equipment for use such as GPS units, a stream gauge with measuring tape and water depth device, student microscopes, etc.
- We held a two-day "Geology Blitz" course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and taught the girls how to use topo maps, how to use physical properties to identify minerals, the three rock types, intro to plate tectonics and earthquakes, introduction to surface and groundwater using a stream table and groundwater model.
- We traveled to Niobrara State Park, about a 4-hour drive, to use as a base for the next three days. The girls took a commercially-run rafting trip on the Missouri River, a walk around the state park to observe geomorphic features around the river and visit an outcrop of meteorite-generated tsunamiite, and a trip to Ashfall Fossil Beds where the girls alternated between digging and plastering vertebrate fossils, and using radar equipment to try and detect bones buried more deeply.
We next traveled to the heart of the Sandhills, to Gudmendsen Research Center, a former working ranch. - On the travel day, we stopped at a water bottling plant (water from a Pleistocene gravel deposit), visited another vertebrate fossil locality, and calculated stream discharge during a picnic.
- In the Sandhills, we split into two groups. One canoed the Loup River with the guidance of the University Recreation Center's canoeing staff, stopping to sample the Pleistocene gravel deposit and anything else that caught our interest. The other group rambled around the Sandhills with a state survey geologist familiar with the geology. This group learned about eolian deposition and augured into peat bog deposits.
- We next traveled to the northwestern part of the state and had a much-needed day off. During that day, the girls could do laundry, hang out, or take a guided walk through some local geology. Next day the girls visited Toadstool Park and the Hudson-Meng bison kill site and worked through hypotheses on how the bison were killed.
- The trip home was punctuated by mechanical problems with the bus, but the girls took the unscheduled day off to catch up their journals and just relax.
Next time, we plan a "wrap-up" day back in Lincoln, where the girls will see the finished prepped vertebrate fossil products in the State Natural History Museum (Morrill Hall).
Working Towards a Diverse Group of Girls
A girl must be a member of GSUSA to participate in a Wider Op. She need not be a member of a troop; she just needs to have paid dues to GSUSA.
Girl Scouts took care of most of the advertising, but we found ways to promote the Wider Op by contacting local high schools and posting a web site. In the end, our efforts were not effective, and all of the participants came from girls who had seen the Girl Scouts U.S.A. flyers on Wider Ops.
