Wednesday, May 17, 2025 - Dorr Room, Surbeck Center, SDSM&T Rapid City

Present were: Andy Johnson, Bill Roggenthen, Jim Meszaros, Joseph Hillberry, Tim Creal, Charles Lamb, Ben Sayler, Bob Magelky, John Swanson, Mitch Chapel, Becky Binder-Anderson, Jo Hartmann, Kathleen VanHorn, Dorothy Keller.

Absent were: Becky Hale, Sandy Gaspar

Agenda

1. EDC Resource Centers:

• Seminar 1 & 2
• Dates for EDC Seminars &endash; October 10, 11, &12 &endash; April 24, 25, &26
• Group of 5 from each school district to attend &endash; 1 elementary, middle school, secondary, curriculum director, Principal or Superintendent.
• Suggestions for locations - Rapid City, Spearfish, Sioux Falls ? The group thought we should try to keep the meetings in South Dakota.

2. Program Manager Search Report:

• Good pool of applicants - have interviewed 4. The decision will be very difficult. All of the candidates were very qualified. Will probably make an offer within a week or so. We hope to have the Program Manager start by July 1, 2000.

3. Material Refurbishment Center:

• Consumable's have been ordered for 6 of the districts. Need to find out which of the non-consumables would be good to have on hand. It was suggested that since Spearfish has been using kits the longest, that they could probably give us some information on items that we should order. Dorothy suggested allocating $2,000 of the refurbishment budget to purchasing inventory to have on hand. The group agreed this would be a good idea.

4. Professional Development Content-Focused Workshops:

• Status report &endash; Dorothy passed out the reservations to date and a spreadsheet of Professional Hours by teacher &endash; listing each workshop & hours.
• Is there a need to reschedule the June 8 Orientation Workshop? Yes. We will cancel the June 8th workshop and notify the teachers.
• We will offer stipends for workshops during the summer and not for the academic. Dorothy will send information about the stipends and workshops out to students who have not yet reserved for any workshops.

5. Site visit from NSF &endash; Joyce Evans - coming in June. She will be here June 19, 20, & 21st. Ben will take her to two workshops, Geology of the Badlands and Physical Science I, Electricity. We will try to set up an informal meeting for the PMT members that are available.

6. Renewal of funding update - We have been operating under the assumption that our funding will continue. We have a verbal confirmation, but are waiting for an official letter.

7. Correlation of FOSS and STC State Standards by grade level. Should we have a

• workshop, or should the new Program Manager assemble the information and proceed from there? The group agreed this would be a good project for the Program Manager.

8. Bill Roggenthen - Sabbatical replacement - what do we want to do? Bill has several people who might be interested. Colin Patterson is one of the faculty at SDSM&T that is interested. Bob Corey is another who is somewhat intereted. His plans are indefinite. Bill will keep trying to recruit someone who is really intereted. The group felt we need to keep the involvement with SDSM&T.

9. Evaluation updates &endash; Bob Magelky &endash; finished his last evaluation at noon today. His report will be put together within the next couple weeks. One of the points that stood out is that the teachers really like the content workshops. The teachers really enjoy being the student and learning about science. A Horizons report shows that it takes the combination of professional development and the units to develop exemplary teachers. Mitch mentioned that his district was excited about Andy Johnson working with the teachers. He felt that personal contact makes a real difference for the project.

10. Site visit reports &endash; Charlie Lamb, Ben Sayler &endash; Charlie went to Badger Clark to talk to kindergarten teachers and staff members a few weeks ago. A few of the lead teachers had used the kits but most of the rest have not. Charlie worked with them using Animals 2 by 2. He broke down the science content and the standards that were addressed by each area. This presentation was instituted by a Douglas teacher who asked Charlie to come and present a lesson using Animals 2 by 2. Ben was invited to Lead-Deadwood to work with Deb Thorp on Mixtures and Solutions. He felt the time was productive. We should encourage the teachers to ask for staff to come visit their classes.

11. Motivating the project!

• Is there a sense among the teachers that this is a project that will really help them? We need to promote the project among the different communities. What can we do to broaden the scope? Need to decide on a target group. All of the districts have open houses, science fairs. Perhaps this is a way to show what we are about. The Center needs to promote different activities with a self generated newsletters, including information on mini-activities that the teachers can use. Perhaps once a quarter have a science day &endash; have the scientists come in to provide activities, invite the parents to show some of the kit activities. Could we use informational videos to promote the kits? Are the videos readily available? It would be good for Lead Teachers to videotape their classes so that new people could benefit from their experience. Have a contest for students to present a lesson. The suggestion was made to ask a reporter from the paper to come and visit a class and write a story about it. Would be good PR for the project. Could create links from the school web pages to the BLAHST web site.

12. Communication Issues

• The districts will send Dorothy databases of their teachers contact information so we can do a better job of getting information to them.

Next meeting &endash; September - date to be determined later