Zeus and volunteers take inventory on the museum's Diptera collection. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Mazanek (Neg# GN 88151-6)

Every Friday these aspiring scientists travel from the South Side to talk about why certain mosquitoes carry malaria, or the role insects play in solving homicides - not quite the conversations expected of the MTV generation. Then again, these are not your typical teenagers. All agreed to volunteer after school for the monumental task of cataloguing the Museum's Diptera collection (an order of insects - including true flies, mosquitoes and gnats - characterized by a pair of functional wings and a vestigial pair used for balancing).

So, why do these teenagers trade in their precious free time to explore the world of entomology? It all started in January 1996, when Bill Ballard, assistant curator of insects, and Zeus Preckwinkle, a science teacher from the Ancona School, were jogging together through the streets of Hyde Park. "While we were jogging, I began to explain to Bill that most of my students have no idea about all the research that takes place at The Field," explains Preckwinkle. "I then asked Bill if he was interested in coming to the school to talk to my students about the Museum." Ballard agreed, but both thought it would be more helpful if they created a more comprehensive educational package for the teenagers, including lectures and an interactive Museum field trip.

Preckwinkle thought this was a great idea for many reasons. First, it would introduce his students to science in a real-world setting. Second, it would help him to answer that age-old question on every student's mind: Why do we need to learn this? Finally, he hoped it would shatter the misconception that a doctoral degree is needed to work in the science field. "In our world you are led to believe that you are either a scientist or someone who sits on the couch watching the Discovery Channel," says Preckwinkle. "There shouldn't be this huge gap; education should be dealing with the idea of getting people involved."

Getting the students involved is precisely what they did. At first Ballard talked to the students about research at the Museum and his work as an entomologist. Preckwinkle then took the students to the Museum to explore the "What is an Animal?" and "Life Over Time" exhibits. While walking through the exhibits, the students were challenged to find the answers to questionnaires prepared by Ballard and Preckwinkle. "Quite often, kids go on a field trip and it is like letting the dog out of the cage," explains Preckwinkle. "I tried to convey to the kids that the Museum is an extension of their classroom that contains a wealth of resources unavailable in a school setting."

After the field trips, Ballard and several collection managers took the students on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Museum, including the divisions of birds, fishes, insects and mammals. At Ballard's final lecture at Ancona, Preckwinkle and a few students approached Ballard and asked whether they could volunteer during the summer. Not only did Ballard think it was a great idea, but he had a project in mind for them: cataloguing the Museum's Diptera collection.

During the summer of 1996, Preckwinkle and a handful of students spent six weeks at the Museum. They catalogued 30 families and 11,255 specimens from the collection, all of which added up to 515 volunteer hours. Unfortunately, they were only halfway through. But Preckwinkle and the students leapt at the chance to finish the job during the school year. "What these kids are doing is very important to the Museum," says Ballard. "We have a huge collection of insects and we need it catalogued onto a computer database with the idea of eventually getting it up on the Web. But we just don't have the manpower at the Museum to do this kind of work. What we have created is a mutually beneficial situation for the Museum and the students." For instance, Andrew Greenlee, one of the first Ancona summer students to join the program, still returns three times a week to work on the collection even though he now attends the Latin School in Chicago.

"The whole experience of coming to the Museum and having focused work to do was something that I had not experienced in school," he explains. Since working in the program, Greenlee now understands taxonomy, DNA extraction, the intricacies of writing a grant proposal and the role insects play in the environment. But perhaps more important to Preckwinkle and Ballard, he now believes a science career is within his reach."There are not too many people who can have an experience like this," Greenlee says. "Even if I don't go into science, I think this experience will greatly affect my life and skills. But hey, maybe one day I will be an entomologist. Before, I didn't even know that people sat around and studied bugs all day."

Because of the success of the program, Ballard sent a proposal to the National Science Foundation for funding to expand the program, which would include three phases starting in 1998 and ending in 2001. In the first phase, students would be exposed to lectures and field trips. Those showing an interest would then be encouraged to spend a summer (second phase) at the Museum cataloguing insects and learning more about entomology. Of those students, the most committed would join Ballard in the final phase: extracting DNA from insects in the Museum's biochemical lab.

Meanwhile, Ballard aims to encourage his young crew of scientists to finish cataloguing the Diptera collection by cross-referencing the species-level database for each specimen (used to construct maps of the distribution of each species). And Preckwinkle hopes curators from other divisions will take an interest in the program so that the students can get a better understanding of the breadth of the science field. Though Ballard admits it can be hard to find time in his schedule to devote to the
program, he believes the payoffs are immeasurable - particularly when fewer students, especially minorities and women, are pursuing science careers. "This is an appropriate age group to target because a loss of self-confidence, beginning around the 7th grade, causes the first leak in the science pipeline, " says Ballard. "In other words, if we don't catch them now we will have lost them forever."

The program also adds a new dimension and challenge to Ballard's responsibilities as an assistant curator. He now looks forward to the end of the week when the students herd into his office, drag him down to the collection room and bombard him with questions about the collection. Keeping the students motivated, encouraging them to think critically and proving that science is multifaceted, Ballard explains, almost rivals his work as an evolutionary biologist.