NCSE is delighted to congratulate Laura A. Bankers, a graduate student in the department of biology at the University of Iowa, and her colleagues for winning the 2017 Thomas Henry Huxley Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution, in recognition of their work with NCSE's Science Booster Club program.
In addition to Bankers, Kyle McLeroy, Joseph Jalinsky, James Woodell, Katelyn Larkin, and Jorge Moreno (all students at the University of Iowa), Robert Todd (a student at Creighton University), Maurine Neiman (a faculty member at the University of Iowa), and NCSE's Claire Adrian-Tucci and Emily Schoerning were named in the award citation.
Initiated in May 2015 and largely staffed by graduate students, the Iowa Science Booster Clubs now boast four clubs with over a thousand members; they have reached nearly 80,000 Iowans through community outreach activities and nearly 5000 students through grants to individual science classrooms.
The chair of SSE's Education and Outreach Committee, which administers the award, told Bankers, "We found your proposal to be exciting and topical, and in addition to the clear scientific relevance of your work, we are confident that the story will be an inspiring example for instructors."