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Stephen Ward, Executive Director of University Communications: Let's get started talking
through a little bit about the background of the Science Festival and how it fits in
with the broader sense of a state wide focus on science and why do we do this in North
Carolina. Let's start with you Jim, give us the back ground of what we are talking about.
James Hathaway: Well for four years now we're working out of the Moorhead Planetarium up
at Chapel Hill. There's been this state wide effort to have this statewide Science Festival
- it is called the North Carolina Science Festival -which you see in the logo. This
is the things that they have been reaching out for years for people around the state
to get involved and do things that will interest the public in Science and Technology, and
they approached us three years ago when we started doing it and we have been growing
every year. We were successful enough last year where people around here said this is
great we ought to do more of it, so we are doing even more of it this year and have gone
from having an Expo which is kind of a science fair in essence though it involves faculty
showing what they do it involves people who are involved in science education like Dr.
Binns here, teaching people on how to teach science, showing kids on how to get kids enthused.
The big point of that really is the whole thing is that it really is important to interest
kids in science. We don't interest enough of our children in science and they don't
want to continue with it when they go to college if they go to college and if we have a sense
that we can intervene early and get them going. We also have a sense that the public in general
doesn't have any idea of what kind of wonderful things are going on at their universities
around the state. Universities and science museums there is an awful lot of science in
North Carolina between the Triangle and us and North Carolina Research campus we're one
of the most science intensive states in the country and people ought to see what is going
on at it there is some really cool stuff. So this year we have expanded from doing the
Expo to doing a big lecture series and then doing a film series.