Valpo science van to run once again

VALPARAISO, Ind. -- After nearly being halted by a budget crisis, Valparaiso University's science van will hit the road again.\nThe van, packed with thousands of dollars worth of sophisticated scientific instruments, brings hands-on science experiments to students at middle schools and high schools across northwestern Indiana.\nThe van was created in 1996 with the support of a Lilly Foundation grant. The state's Build Indiana Fund picked up $2.5 million of the van's budget in 2001.\nBut Gov. Frank O'Bannon shifted $241 million in Build Indiana money into the state's general fund to help offset a growing budget deficit, leaving science van coordinator Sandra McMullen scrambling to find new funds.\nTwo new grants kept the van on the road. The Discovery Alliance, a group of four area community foundations, provided a two-year grant of $201,000.\nThe Indiana Commission for Higher Education also awarded the project a two-year $246,000 grant through a federal teacher quality initiative.\n"I think it's exciting to see kids get so excited about science," Ce Ce Kaylor, a youth program consultant for the Discovery Alliance, told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville.\n"It's something we need to invest in," she said. "We have some pretty dismal test scores."\nThe van's resurgence comes at a time when science is being added to ISTEP, the state's standardized test. Fifth-graders will be tested in September. Over the next few years, students in seventh and ninth grades also will be tested in science.\nTwenty teachers from school districts in Lake, LaPorte, Porter and Starke counties are learning the experiments their students will conduct in the classroom. They each receive a $600 stipend for their efforts and three graduate credits.\nThey also will undergo follow-up training and be expected to use at least two experiments with their students.\n"This is the kind of stuff that no school can offer, not even a private one," said Josh Bachman, a seventh-grade science teacher at Immanuel Lutheran School in Valparaiso.\nMary Ellen Sichtermann, a sixth-grade teacher at Polk Elementary School in Lake Station, said she tried to involve her students in as many hands-on experiments as possible.\n"It's one thing for me to tell them, but it leaves a lasting impression when they see it," she said.