College of Natural Sciences outreach programs extend to university students, too. The Physics Homework Service is a popular program for the approximately 13,000 university and high school students a semester who seek peer guidance on physics problems. For some time, Dr. Jay Banner, Associate Professor of Geological Sciences, and several other geology professors made regular presentations about their research to area public school students and other local groups. But in the fall of 1999, Banner and Dr. Libby A. Stern, Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences, decided to organize the Geology Outreach Lecture Series to reach and inspire even more people about science. The series continues in 2000-2001 and is sponsored by the UT Department of Geological Sciences, the College of Natural Sciences and the Texas Memorial Museum of Science and History.
Audience members have the opportunity to interact with the scientist and ask questions.
Anyone interested in science is welcome to attend, but a special invitation is extended to K-12 science teachers. A free CD-ROM of the lecture is provided to each teacher as a teaching resource. The CD-ROM contains the lecture's slides and notes as well as related Web sites and classroom activities. For Austin Science Fun Day, major sponsors included Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and National Instruments, with KXAN-TV 36 as media sponsor. For UTeach Outreach Science Enrichment, 3M provided supplies for the elementary school science laboratory experiments supervised by UT Austin students.