Kids Evolutionary Perspectives Society (KEPS)

OFFICIAL CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS AT first-ever KEPS poster session – slated to take place in Boston during NEEPS (between 4/9 and 4/12). Science student in the Boston area? Science educator? Don’t miss this great opportunity for your kids to present at a professional conference connected to evolution!

MISSION: KEPS is designed to provide educational outreach and presentational opportunities for kids of all shapes and sizes. Loosely affiliated with the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS), KEPS is designed to provide a forum for kids to present ideas and findings from evolution-relevant work that they encounter. This would include presenting such things as:

a. fossils along with the story of where the fossils came from

b. a poster about a particular dinosaur species and its likely environmental conditions

c. a poster about some basic aspect of evolutionary science, such as natural selection or the basics of genetics

d. research projects and/or a photo collage of a trip to a place rife with life, such as the Galapagos Islands, Florida, or Madagascar

e. or more! As is often the case, kids surprise us!

MEMBERS: Given that this society has its origins among discussions of the children of scholars who regularly attend NEEPS, KEPS‘ founding members include several of the kids of NEEPS, such as Andrew and Megan, Enso, and Bailey, Jagger, and Lux. But, in the spirit of NEEPS, we hope to cast a broad and welcoming net!

ACTIVITIES: We hope to have the kids bring poster/hands-on presentations to NEEPS and/or similar conferences and to have these on display in a special location during the conference – with opportunities for the kids to share their work with others. Further, we hope to have an outreach component, that would include reaching out to local school districts in the vicinities of conferences held by NEEPS (and perhaps related conferences) to see if local science educators might be interested in bringing their students to present KEPS posters as well during the conference.

COSTS: We hope that costs will be non-existent or negligible given the clear outreach-related goals of KEPS – and we would welcome initiatives to try to seek external funding to support KEPS activities (i.e., if you want to write  a grant to support all this, we’ll help!).

CONTACT: For now, the contact information includes three dyed-in-the-wool NEEPSters who also happen to have some awesome kids:

Chris Lynn (cdlynn@ua.edu); dad of Bailey, Jagger, and Lux; University of Alabama

Glenn Geher (geherg@newpaltz.edu); Andrew and Megan’s dad;  SUNY New Paltz

Rosemarie Sokol-Chang (rischang@gmail.com); Enso’s mom; APA

INSPIRATION: Megan has presented both a poster (2013) and an oral presentation (2014) at meetings of NEEPS – and she sort of rocked these presentations – showing that kids have all the potential needed to learn ideas about evolution and to present these to a large audience.

KEPS KIDS

KEPS KIDS! From left to right: Enso, Andrew, and Megan

KEPS!

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One Response to Kids Evolutionary Perspectives Society (KEPS)

  1. Avatar Ines says:

    This is a great initiative. I will advertise it.
    Thanks for sharing
    Ines

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