Category: Fun

265 local students to get first look at SC4 Experience Center

On Friday, Nov. 2, 265 students from the STEAM Academy at Woodrow Wilson and Memphis Community Schools will get a first look at St. Clair County Community College’s new Experience Center partnership with the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum before the Super Science Day public preview event Nov. 3.

One goal of the Experience Center is to provide unique experiential education opportunities to local students who may not otherwise have access to them.

“It is so important to have something like this right in our own community,” says STEAM Academy at Woodrow Wilson Principal Joseph Kramer. “Many of our students don’t have the ability to travel to Ann Arbor, Detroit or other areas around the state where these kind of opportunities exist. This is such a valuable resource, and we look forward to making these field trips for many years to come.”

During their visit, students will explore interactive exhibits on science, technology, engineering, arts and math, experiencing all the activities that will be part of Super Science Day ahead of schedule. They will have the opportunity to conduct innovative experiments, engage with live animals, interact with music and movement through a sonic display, explore the inside of an ambulance, learn about solar and wind energy, see an amazing collection of fossils and specimens, and view SC4’s new live sturgeon exhibit.

“This is precisely what we envisioned with this partnership,” says SC4 President Dr. Deborah Snyder. “The Experience Center will allow us to welcome more visitors to campus to provide them with an exciting experience that helps educate and inspire them.”

Super Science Day takes place from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, November 3 in SC4’s Clara E. Mackenzie Building. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information about scheduling a field trip to the Experience Center, send an email to experiencecenter@sc4.edu.

SC4 brings groundbreaking musical to the community for six nights starting Nov. 1

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, St. Clair County Community College will debut its production of HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.

SC4’s production honors the 50th anniversary of the classic countercultural musical, which made its Broadway debut in April 1968. Telling the story of the “tribe,” a group of politically active hippies living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War, HAIR’s debut is widely considered a groundbreaking moment in American theatre.

“HAIR is such an important piece,” says Scott Dambacher, SC4 theatre instructor and director of the college’s production. “It was the first true rock musical, the first nonlinear storyline conceived out of experimental acting techniques, and the first to feature drug use and sexual freedom — what was happening on stage was happening in the streets and parks of New York City right outside the theatre.”

The play made waves for directly addressing the issues of its time, drawing striking attention to the country’s divisions amidst the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

“In many ways, the piece is still relevant and extremely important for us today, 50 years later,” says Dambacher.

As with all SC4 arts events, the college’s production of HAIR is a true community effort. Many of the play’s band members also belong to The Poltroons, who run the open mic night at Lynch’s Irish Tavern in downtown Port Huron. Lynch’s, along with The Raven Café, Main Street Garage and other local organizations, sponsor arts programming at the college throughout the year. On Halloween morning, the local community can get a taste of the talent that will be on display as cast members and musicians perform live on the WPHM Morning Show with Paul Miller at 8:40 a.m.

“I think our production is unique in that our cast is the same age range (18-21) as the characters being portrayed, so it’s unique to have such a young cast involved,” says Dambacher. “I think the audience can expect a great performance of an important piece of theatre and hopefully take something away from it.”

Tickets for SC4’s production of HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical are still available. The show runs Nov. 1 through 3 and Nov. 8 through 10 in the college’s Fine Arts Theatre, starting at 8 p.m. each night. Please note: This show contains adult situations and language. Parental guidance is recommended.

In a first for the region, sturgeon exhibit to be feature of SC4 Super Science Day and new Experience Center

St. Clair County Community College’s new Experience Center soon will be home to a sturgeon exhibit as part of a unique environmental education program created for K-12 schools by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

20181019_193751(1)The Sturgeon in the Classroom program is facilitated in Southeast Michigan by Sturgeon for Tomorrow, a nonprofit group that works to preserve and protect the future of lake sturgeon in the Huron-Erie corridor. Plans to develop the program for SC4 came out of a collaboration between the group’s St. Clair-Detroit River chapter and another nonprofit organization, Friends of the St. Clair River, which works to protect the St. Clair Watershed and educate the public about its importance.

SC4’s sturgeon exhibit – currently scheduled to open to the public by the college’s Super Science Day on Nov. 3 – will be the first of its kind in St. Clair County.

“Lake sturgeon are an important species in the St. Clair River ecosystem,” says Carrie Dollar, professor of Biology at SC4 and a member of the Friends of the St. Clair River board of directors. “The northern end of the St. Clair River, just a few miles from the college, boasts one of the largest successful breeding grounds for lake sturgeon in the entire Great Lakes ecosystem.”

The sturgeon will be located within the Experience Center at SC4 and housed in a large tank. In April, it will be reclaimed by Sturgeon for Tomorrow and released back into its waters of origin in the Black River in Cheboygan County, Michigan.

“By being housed in our tank for the winter, we are significantly increasing the survival rate of this sturgeon once it’s released back into the wild,” says Dollar. “The hope is that its temporary stay increases its fitness and ability to one day become a successful, active breeding animal in the wild.”

IMG_1740The Experience Center’s sturgeon exhibit will provide a living complement to the unique items in the college’s Dr. Bassam H. Nasr Natural Science Museum, which is home the largest collection of fossil artifacts in the Michigan thumb region. Sturgeon fossils appear in rocks dating from 66 to 100 million years ago, meaning the fish was a contemporary of later dinosaurs like the Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus.

Beyond the biology, the program also provides a valuable opportunity to highlight the region’s Native American cultures. Lake sturgeon, known as Nmé to many of the area’s First Nation tribes, are the top fish clan and an important resource to Native Americans, including the Gun Lake Tribe, which reveres sturgeon as grandfathers and grandmothers whose clan members are “as long lived as the fish.”

Super Science Day will take place from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Nov. 3, in the Clara E. Mackenzie Building on SC4’s campus. The free event is open to the public and will give guests a sneak preview of the new Experience Center partnership with the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, a partnership which will result in a multifaceted interactive STEAM center aimed at promoting exploration, education and inspiration in Southeast Michigan.

Learn more about Super Science Day and the Experience Center at SC4.

SC4 president puts the emphasis on ‘community’ with new Experience Center

St. Clair County Community College President Dr. Deborah Snyder began in her role in 2016 focused on enhancing the student experience and re-establishing the college as an integral community partner.

That’s why just four months into her term the visionary alumna, who had already launched numerous other initiatives, boarded a bus with SC4 faculty and staff members to visit the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.

“I had the idea then to connect Ann Arbor specialists and resources with college experts to bring hands-on STEAM learning opportunities to our current and future students in the Blue Water Area,” Dr. Snyder says. “That kind of broader partnership, to my knowledge, has not existed in a community college setting in Michigan, so I’m sure it was a little ‘outside of the box’ initially for some people.”

Only two years later, Dr. Snyder’s vision has become a reality.

Read more from The Keel’s feature story on the Experience Center.