Located on the opposite side of campus from other academic buildings, the Galbraith Marine Science Laboratory can often feel isolated from the rest of Eckerd’s campus. An invisible barrier has slowly been built between the two major components of Eckerd’s academia, resulting in a lack of communication and conversation.
Hannah Shairer, a senior majoring in marine science and one of the club heads for the Science Outreach Club, also noticed this divide and decided she wanted to use the club to help people connect across that rift.
“We want people to come together and talk and just understand that, you know, there doesn’t have to be a divide, necessarily between… natural science and social science or natural science and arts and music,” said Shairer. “So like, that’s kind of the goal. It’s just, can we get people to come together? Can we get people to talk?”
To encourage this “talk” you might catch the Science Outreach Club on South Beach, painting seashells and having casual conversations about classes and career goals. Creating a welcoming space for interdisciplinary dialogue is something the club has shifted its focus towards more heavily in recent years.
Shairer said that creating “a space for people on Eckerd campus to feel valued and feel seen in what they’re doing” is a goal for her and Mylee Whitus, a senior and the second clubhead.
While the club was created to make science more approachable for everyone, Shairer and Whitus thought the club could be used to connect people, not in spite of their majors, but through them. The club recognizes that everyone is doing hard and admirable work – work that deserves to be celebrated by people inside and outside of that major.
“We all understand that college is hard… And we’re excited for what you’re doing, and we want to hear about it. Like, you might not be taking a biochem final… but you could be doing something equally hard, equally as challenging, just in a different space. And we want to make sure that those spaces come together,” said Shairer.
Eckerd is a small college with a student body of just under 2,000 people. Combined with the fact that the campus is mostly closed to the public, the commonly used term “Eckerd bubble” seems to become a fairly accurate descriptor. With such a small community, Shairer sees a ripe opportunity for everyone to become more connected and improve conversation skills.
“I think that’s a big thing that we try to do is just blur that line as much as we can. I think Eckerd’s, you know, a good bubble where I think… these conversations can happen very openly… Like, majors aside… I think it’s important to just learn how to talk to people,” said Shairer.
The Science Outreach Club also hosts fun on-campus events such as the NORD-sponsored color run and Nobel Prize Night in collaboration with ASPEC. If you’d like to get involved with the Science Outreach Club or hear about any of their upcoming events, you can check out their Instagram @science_outreach_club, or you can reach out via email to scienceoutreachclub@eckerd.edu.