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Elizabethtown College Receives Grant for Science Program
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A private college in Pennsylvania will use a $30,000 grant from Constellation Energy to supply its mobile Science in Motion program with equipment to be loaned out to school districts across the state.
(TNS) — Every year, Wendy Martin flips through her database of science and math teachers in Lancaster and surrounding counties to ask them what lab equipment they would purchase if money was not an issue.
“I say ‘pretend it’s Christmas. What is your wish list?'” Martin said. “If you could have any type of equipment that you could use in your classroom, what would it be?”
Martin, the force behind Elizabethtown College’s Science in Motion program and the college’s education outreach director, references the teacher wish lists when selecting the types of grants she will apply for and when picking out new equipment for the program, which lends STEM equipment to public and private middle schools and high schools.
Historically, Science in Motion has received $100,000 a year in funding from the state Department of Education and through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit program, Martin said.
To the average person $100,000 seems like a lot, but for Science in Motion, it’s just enough to pay the program’s mobile educator, Irene Hawkins, and maintain the blue van as the duo tote equipment across the county.
“Buying new equipment is tough,” Martin said.
But this year will be different. This year, she said, is like Christmas for Science in Motion.
In November, Baltimore-based emissions-free energy supplier Constellation Energy awarded the program a $30,000 grant, the largest grant the program has received in its 16-year history.
Because the grant is meant to encourage youth to explore “clean energy careers and contribute to a sustainable future,” Martin said she will use the funds to purchase equipment often used in environmental testing, like soil and water testing kits, tools for determining temperature changes in the air, and microscopes that are smaller, more durable and easier to transport than the larger ones she lends out now.
Middle and high school teachers in Lancaster, Lebanon, Schuylkill, Berks, Cumberland and Dauphin counties can request equipment from Science in Motion at no cost through an online form on Elizabethtown College’s website.
Elizabethtown is one of 10 colleges and universities across Pennsylvania that form the Science in Motion consortium, providing equipment statewide. Juniata College was the first to host the program in 1987, with Elizabethtown College joining in 2009.
Elizabethtown’s program has equipment on loan almost every week of the school year, Martin said. Last year, the program reached 21,000 students from 26 schools across 22 school districts, she said, though most teachers she works with are in Lancaster and Lebanon counties.
“It’s a very cost effective way of leveling the playing field because it doesn’t matter if you’re a well-to-do school or you have needs,” Martin said. “Everybody gets the same high-end quality hands-on equipment that you may not have otherwise been able to get.”
‘LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD’
Hempfield High School biology teacher Katy Miller has been borrowing equipment since Elizabethtown founded the program.
Science in Motion has “allowed us to provide some extension to our curriculum that we may not be able to provide if they were not around,” Miller said.
“Science is expensive to teach,” she said, and having the ability to borrow equipment at no cost adds to students’ lab experiences in the classroom if a school cannot afford equipment.
Miller said the program has been especially helpful when she or her colleagues have a new idea for a lab during the school year after submitting their budgets. Rather than wait until the next school year, she borrows equipment from the program.
With nearly 7,000 students, Hempfield is the second-largest school district in Lancaster County. For Miller, that means something like a gel electrophoresis technology lab, in which students separate DNA or RNA using porous gel and an electric field, is an “extensive undertaking.”
To do the lab, Miller said the program preps more than 300 gel resources for students each year and provides chambers — enclosed, clear, plastic trays — for them to safely conduct the lab in. With the help of the program, she said the school has purchased some of its own chambers for the lab over time.
Miller said she would recommend the program to other educators. If teachers are unfamiliar with the equipment they need to borrow, Miller said Hawkins or Martin will help teach their classes or show the teachers how to use the tech.
“Kids love labs,” Miller said. The program “just brings science to life when they can actually do a hands-on scientific experiment.”
‘THEY COME TO US’
Bill Traphagen, a STEM teacher at St. John Neumann Catholic School, said he has borrowed equipment twice a year for the last nine years, often keeping it for several weeks at a time. He is an advocate of the program and often sings its praises at regular meetings the Diocese of Harrisburg holds for Catholic school teachers.
“They deliver — that’s phenomenal,” Traphagen said. “It’s not like, ‘OK, after school I gotta go get … .’ They come to us.”
His students look forward to using the equipment, too, Traphagen said. At the beginning of the year, students ask him when they get to dissect the owl pellets — compact masses of regurgitated prey remains — that Traphagen obtains through Science in Motion.
In addition to loaning out equipment, the program provides some consumables, items like owl pellets that are used up during a lab.
Traphagen said he also borrows 3D pens that can be used to create 3D body system illustrations, rather than learning from a flat piece of paper.
“If it wasn’t for (Science in Motion), I couldn’t do half the things I do,” Traphagen said.
As a veteran of the program, Traphagen said pickup and delivery of the equipment he needs is easy: Hawkins leaves it in the school office for dropoff, and Traphagen leaves it there for pickup.
“I know that having the equipment is so important to being able to do the best job that you can do,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins works part-time, mainly taking care of deliveries on her downtime between Tuesday and Thursday classes she teaches as an adjunct environmental science professor at Gettysburg College. She began working with Science in Motion three years ago after her children started college and she wanted something else to do.
“I love the idea and the mission of getting science equipment to everyone,” Hawkins said. “I’m a big believer that all students should have access to good education and all the techniques and the equipment that is necessary to do that.”
Sometimes she will step in and help a teacher, but mostly she just plays Santa Claus, delivering equipment in her sleigh — the Science in Motion van.
Some school districts have “very large class sizes and very low funding,” Hawkins said, “and we’re able to help those students learn and explore science.”
© 2025 LNP (Lancaster, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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