It's Cool, Really, We Promise

To show students in rural areas of the US that science is cool, biologists from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC, set out to bring Darwin Day activities to 19 schools in Virginia, Nebraska, Montana, and Iowa, reports The New York Times. The scientists were met with some skepticism from both scientists and the school communities. "You want to send evolutionary biologists out to rural America?" the center's Craig McClain recalls thinking. "On purpose?" At the schools, the biologists went through a "delicate process" to negotiate their visit with school officials who were nervous about the scientists' ideological intentions. In the end, the traveling band of scientists says what it found was curiosity from the students. "I had imagined that these periods in the auditorium would be cold and boring," Shae Carter, an Iowan 10^th grader, tells the Times. "But I liked it."