Tropical botanist Dan Skean is well known on Albion's campus for his energetic enthusiasm, serving as the voice of the British Eighth, leading student researchers through rainforests and teaching everyone from SOAR parents to ready-for-graduate-school seniors.  So it's not surprising that Skean, the father of a third-grader, recently volunteered to host a botany enrichment unit for the entire third grade of Albion Public Schools. 

"Whew!" says Skean, of shoehorning fifteen extra lab sessions, with more than 100 energetic nine-year-olds,  into his end-of-year schedule.

Over the course of three weeks, Skean brought the classes to the Albion College greenhouse, where they studied plant adaptations and conducted an experiment to see how salt affects seed germination.  Not only did the students have the chance to study some basic botany firsthand, "they also got an introduction to experimental design and hypothesis testing, the scientific method they'll use in college and beyond," says Skean. 

"My students had such a great time at Dr. Skean's lab," says Megan Murray, '94, one of Albion's third grade teachers.  "They don't always see the connection science has to their world. For instance, we discovered that wheat seeds were affected by salt water in an adverse way ... from that, we were able to think about other plant life that are affected by salt, even the effect salting a sidewalk in winter has on our lawns and trees."

"Beyond that, my students got an opportunity to have equipment at their disposal that most 8 and 9 year olds would never be able to use," notes Murray.  "They were able to utilize Dr. Skean's microscopes to really check out the root hairs and seed coats of their wheat seeds. They discovered a whole new dimension to a world they thought they knew. It was so cool to watch their faces when they looked at their wheat seeds for the first time."