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\u2019s campus. An invisible barrier has slowly been built between the two major components of Eckerd\u2019s academia, resulting in a lack of communication and conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hannah Shairer<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want people to come together and talk and just understand that, you know, there doesn’t have to be a divide, necessarily between\u2026 natural science and social science or natural science and arts and music,\u201d said Shairer. \u201cSo like, that’s kind of the goal. It’s just, can we get people to come together? Can we get people to talk?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To encourage this \u201ctalk\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shairer said that creating \u201ca space for people on Eckerd campus to feel valued and feel seen in what they’re doing\u201d is a goal for her and Mylee Whitus, a senior and the second clubhead.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 work that deserves to be celebrated by people inside and outside of that major.<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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\u2026 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,\u201d said Shairer.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cEckerd bubble\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2026 these conversations can happen very openly\u2026 Like, majors aside… I think it’s important to just learn how to talk to people,\u201d said Shairer.<\/p>\n 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\u2019d 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<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Located on the opposite side of campus from other academic buildings, the Galbraith Marine Science Laboratory can often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[33639,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-53536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-science_and_technology","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}