Due to a shortage of funding, the DNA EpiCenter, located by the Connecticut College Arboretum, will soon close.
When Connecticut College students received an e-mail on October 19 announcing the Center’s closing, many were taken aback. Generally, this emotion was felt not because of the closing of the Center, but rather because few knew that the Center even existed on campus.
The DNA EpiCenter was founded in the 1970s with the mission to “promote the understanding of the science of life to all ages.” The center worked specifically to educate students from kindergarten through twelfth grade about biology and life sciences.
Through summer camps, family tour groups and school tour groups, the scientists, researchers and volunteers on staff at the DNA EpiCenter were trained to provide hands-on, age-appropriate learning opportunities that were age appropriate for their visitors.
Instructors hoped to motivate students to understand the type of research that professional biologists and geneticists do every day by guiding students to perform experiments of their own that mimicked real-life experiments, studies and research methods.
The DNA EpiCenter also provided continued education of teachers. Through seminars and other events, scientists at the DNA EpiCenter welcomed New England teachers to the Center to be educated on the most recent DNA and biology related discoveries and issues.
The DNA EpiCenter also adopted the Connecticut Core Science Curriculum Framework, which outlines Connecticut’s Department of Education’s curricular goals for grades pre-kindergarten through high school. The EpiCenter’s programs thus correlated with the “content areas” of the Framework.
Additionally, the Center’s curricular standards were designed to meet those of the National Science Education Standards for “content and teaching.”
A youth internship program was also made available for high school students at the DNA EpiCenter by means of the Center’s generous DeWitt-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund. The program, called “Youth ALIVE!” (Youth Achievement through Learning, Involvement, Volunteering and Employment) allowed students to explore future employment possibilities in scientific arenas as well as business and technology.
The program was designed specifically for centers and museums like the DNA EpiCenter to enhance the way they programmed for and educated adolescents, as well as to inspire them to be involved in fields of science.
None of these opportunities provided by the DNA EpiCenter will longer be available because of the Center’s closing.
Despite continued private donor and foundation financial commitments to the Center, it was the termination of highly-important state funding that moved the leaders of the Center to decide to close down the facility.
As addressed in the e-mail to the Connecticut College student body from Ulysses Hammond, Vice President for Administration, when the DNA EpiCenter was incepted, the decision was made that should the Center close, the College would gain ownership of the building.
It is expected that the facility will be fully turned over to the College within the next few months.
“[The College] has had a very close and collaborative relationship with the Center over the years,” Hammond said. “We have always had a faculty member or administrator on the Board of the Center.”
Although Connecticut College students have not had much interaction with the EpiCenter, its closing will affect science department members and college administrators.
They also know the value of the space, which was described by Hammond as “in good shape.”
Although the College has not been officially decided for what the space will be used, it will most likely be transformed into program and office space for the College, or possibly even teaching space.
As Hammond expressed, “[The Center] has the ability to be used in a flexible manner.”
