Outreach Events with K-12 Students

Outreach Events

While the field station continues to be used by Tarleton students and faculty for learning and research, one of our major goals is to realize the potential for outreach and community engagement. Since 2015 many school groups have come to the field station for a day of learning and exploration, including students from Goldthwaite, Comanche, Mullen, Priddy, and Brownwood ISDs. The recent acquisition of Tarleton’s Mobile Discovery Lab has enhanced our ability to host these types of groups by providing additional indoor space.

Tarleton faculty and students engage these groups in a variety of activities, with the health of the Colorado River taking center stage. Hands-on activities typically include water quality testing, microscopic examination of aquatic organisms from a variety of different sources around the ranch, taking measurements of freshwater mussels and completing simple statistical

comparisons of different samples, nature walks to examine the differing plant and animal life from different habitats, and examining up-close the differences between carnivores and herbivores with respect to tooth and jaw structure in mammals and bill/beak differences in birds. Last fall we hosted all of the 6th graders from Mills County schools, and last spring all 5th graders from Brownwood ISD and 9th graders from Goldthwaite ISD.

Mission Statement

The mission of Tarleton’s Timberlake Biological Field Station is to:

• advance environmental research.

• engage students in scientific discovery.

• promote stewardship of the natural world.

Local elementary students at a Timberlake Field Day9th graders examining micro-organisms