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How We
Conducted a Wider Opportunity,
Nebraska Rocks!! - July 2000
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.
GSUSA
website
Wider Ops
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.
Time Line
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Month
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Pre-First Year
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First Year
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Second Year
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Third Year
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January
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Propose draft plan to local Council
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Posted a web site (that no selected participant
ever saw!)
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*Committee meets and selects participants and alternates
*Notify girls
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February
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Contacted local Councils and
high schools to encourage minority applicants
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*Selected and notified graduate student "Science Counselors"
*Finalize a Safety Wise person
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March
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Our council board met and
approved the plan
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Three mailings to girls over this time: notice of deposit due; health forms; clothing lists; equipment lists
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April
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*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
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May
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Council prepares proposal
to GSUSA; they will need a tentative budget and what the program will
cost each girl
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Finalized contents and schedule for "Blitz Course"
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June
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"Shakedown" field trips
Reserve housing
GSUSA mails out Wider Op brochure to Councils
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July
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Wider Op!
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August
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Council submits proposal
to GSUSA
Wrote and submitted proposal
for funding to AWGF
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Assess outcome: girls' reactions, Scout leaders',
Graduate students'
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September
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Party!
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October
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Brainstorm
a plan
(Note Council has until August of following year to submit proposal; you can "brainstorm" and propose in early First Year
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Proposal, funding from a UNL
agency
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Call for applications for graduate student "Science Counselors"
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November
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GSUSA notifies Council of approval
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December
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Girls' applications due; disperse
applications to committee members
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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.
Some
of Our Activities
- 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.
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