RutgerScience kids’ pages debut across the state
Archived article from Oct 20, 2003
By Bill Haduch
There’s a lot of cool and amazing science going on at Rutgers, and now there’s a fun, colorful way to explain it to our most important audiences — K-12 students, parents, teachers, taxpayers, legislators and just about anyone else who picks up a newspaper.
“RutgerScience,” a full-page, full-color kids’ science page debuted in September in New Jersey’s seven Gannett newspapers: Home News Tribune (New Brunswick), Courier-News (Bridgewater), Asbury Park Press, Daily Record (Morristown), Courier-Post (Camden), Ocean County Observer, and The Daily Journal (Vineland). Each page, subtitled “Cool and amazing research from the State University of New Jersey,” brings the Rutgers science message to nearly a half-million readers throughout the state. This includes about 40,000 papers distributed directly to New Jersey classrooms as part of a national, nonprofit service called “Newspapers in Education.”
The first edition, sponsored by the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, explained the science behind the new Rutgers IMAX film, “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea.” The second, sponsored by the department of ceramic and materials engineering tackled the department’s activities related to nanotechnology. “For now we are running monthly editions,” said Kim Manning-Lewis, executive director of university relations. “The graphics are youthful and bright, the writing is fun and quirky. While ostensibly designed to inform and educate middle-schoolers, who in a few short years will be choosing a college, RutgerScience has broad appeal that attracts attention across a broad spectrum of our constituencies.”
The concept has already attracted several awards. Last year, in an earlier format, the pages received acclaim from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the New Jersey Press Association.
It all started when Janice McDonnell, manager of many programs — including K-12 education — for the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS), noticed how another university was sponsoring educational newspaper pages. “These didn’t even necessarily relate to that university’s programs. I wondered what it would take to actually produce a page of original material about Rutgers’ marine science.”
McDonnell teamed up with Bill Haduch, a science communicator with university relations and author of eight children’s science books. Together, Haduch and McDonnell devised “C.O.O.L. Classroom,” a page of original material based on IMCS’s interactive educational Web site of the same name. They worked with Gannett to negotiate a heavily discounted educational insertion rate.
“It was an instant hit. Sometimes success can be hard to quantify, but we do know we quadrupled attendance at an open house mentioned in one of the pages,” McDonnell said. All told, three C.O.O.L. Classroom pages were produced in 2003 covering such subjects as upwelling, estuaries and the polar oceans. Another page, developed for Earth Day, was sponsored by Rutgers’ Center for Advanced Materials via Immiscible Polymer Processing. It featured the center’s environmentally friendly plastic building materials. The pages are easily made into posters and have been observed hanging in classrooms throughout the state.
Over the summer, University Relations decided to roll out the concept to the entire university science community and RutgerScience was born. Each page is sponsored by a department or center and features a kid-friendly take on a particular subject. The pages are written and directed by Haduch. Funding is usually covered by outreach provisions in existing grants.
A Web site featuring RutgerScience pages and information about the program is on the horizon.
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