Biology Club gives back

Grace Christiansen

The Lawrence University Biology Club will host two screenings of “Batman: The Dark Knight” next week, Friday Nov. 14. The screening, which will be held in Youngchild 121, is one of many fundraisers the club is hosting this year to help raise money for a local high school.
A Biology Club member, junior Brent Nathan, said that the Batman screening is the big event of the year and that “the smaller events for the charity will include selling pizza slices after labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays next term. We also hope to have an event at the coffeehouse,” an event which would take place late in second term.
When not raising money for local high schools, the club is busy engaging the campus and local community in other ways. One such event is “Science Day,” which is an event open to elementary school students in the Appleton area. “Faculty members from different departments such as chemistry, biology and anthropology lecture on a common theme such as how fur is beneficial to animals,” Nathan said.
“Biology Club members help organize and run the day,” Nathan added. “We have some demos and interact with the kids. The goal is to increase interest and enthusiasm about science.”
But the club is not limited to engaging Appleton youth. This past Tuesday the Biology Club hosted a naval aviation medicine specialist who spoke to the Lawrence community about his field.
The Biology Club also takes an annual field trip. Last year they went to Milwaukee. Said Nathan, “We walked through Body Worlds, saw an IMAX film, which portrayed how our daily actions affect our bodies … and took a tour of the Medical College of Wisconsin that was guided by a graduate school admissions person.” This year’s trip has not yet been decided.
The club is not restricted to biology majors and, according to Nathan, is always looking for new members. For more information contact Judith Humphries, the interim faculty advisor.