Five months after announcing a grim future for the Ozark Natural Science Center, the center’s board instead has raised nearly $1 million toward sustaining its science education programs for another 20 years.
“What we learned from the community was how much the community cared,” said Ken Ewing, founder of the center, who is serving as interim director. “They’re coming forward to help us meet these goals.”
The Ozark Natural Science Center issued a news release Monday that its Growing Forward capital campaign has raised $830,000 toward a goal of $1 million in support of the center’s programs.
Ewing plans to go beyond the $1 million, though, with the hope of reducing the cost for school districts to send children to the center and eventually to fund an endowment, he said.
The center opened in 1992 with a summer camp and later added a two-day, one-night residential environmental education program for area school children. More than 45,000 children have stayed overnight since that program began in 1994.
The center’s campus is in the Bear Hollow Natural Area, located on 500 acres of Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission land in Madison County between Eureka Springs and Huntsville.
The first $1 million raised through the Growing Forward campaign will go toward improving technology infrastructure at the center, refurbishing its facilities, hiring a marketing director and symposiums for organizations involved in science education, Ewing said.
Improvements in technology will allow the center to reach children who aren’t able to visit the center.
The board also is working to close the gap between what schools pay for children to attend the overnight program and its actual cost, Ewing said. The program costs about $200, but the center charges $134 per child.
The board won’t raise the cost for schools but instead has been working to reduce the center’s overall costs.
The board announced in late February that it was suspending its overnight program for school-age children and its summer camp program because expenses had continued to exceed revenue.
“My wife and I were the founders of the center,” said Ewing, whose two sons grew up to be scientists. “We had a lot of people approach us to see what could be done. A lot of people called us saying, ‘We don’t want y’all to go away.’”
He hated the thought of children without the opportunities the center had provided. Ken and his wife, RuAnn Ewing, were actively involved with the center for the first 10 years, then their involvement waned, he said.
As public outcry about the center’s possible closure grew, Ewing asked the board to give him a week to determine what level of support existed in the community, he said. He received early commitments for long-term support, he said.
By April, the directors voted unanimously to keep the center open and began a fundraising drive.
Ewing’s visit to the center in the spring rekindled his passion for the science center. The children were asking questions about the birds, bugs and sounds even before they were out in the field.
“It’s that level of excitement, that level of curiosity of the mind starting to spin and learn,” Ewing said. “We were on the right path, and it did not need to go away.”
The suspension affected only this year’s summer programs, and regular programming will resume in September, Ewing said.
The overnight trip to Ozark Natural Science Center is one experience that caps children’s elementary education in the Rogers School District, said Virginia Abernathy, Rogers assistant superintendent of elementary curriculum and instruction. Every elementary school takes its fifth-graders to the center.
The overnight stay reinforces what children learn in science and provides experiences, such as a nighttime hike, that would be impossible during a typical school day, Abernathy said.
“For many of our students, it’s their first time to spend the night away from home,” she said. “It provides that actual hands-on time. You’re out in nature.”
The Ozark Natural Science Center’s overnight educational program fills a niche that no other organization in Northwest Arkansas meets, said Mark Clippinger, park superintendent for Hobbs State Park.
“It would have been a great loss,” Clippinger said.
Clippinger, 54, spent his childhood outside, he said, but some children today are disconnected from the outdoors. Computers and technology draw their attention, and some children don’t hike or camp aside from going to Ozark Natural Science Center.
“We’re all connected together,” he said. “We’re all part of the web of life.”
Clippinger, who was a member of the founding board of directors, hopes the center’s board will work toward an endowment to sustain the center.
“It was a labor of love from the beginning,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/17/2013