Welcome to the Bitterroot Community Science Center!
Our Mission:
The Bitterroot Community Science Center exists to facilitate experience-driven biology education and research. Specifically, we seek to engage our community in learning about local wildlife and the importance of ecological stewardship. Even when access to excellent science education is available, students often find it difficult to relate the material they learn in the classroom to real-world applications. We believe that hands-on research is an excellent way to learn how fun and rewarding science can be. So we offer unique opportunities for students of all ages to engage in both laboratory and field-based learning.
Our Purpose:
The Center’s goal is to serve as a community resource for local experience-based learning and discovery. One way we do this is by collaborating with local elementary and high school classrooms to develop customized science curricula built around our local research projects. Our online classroom resources allow participating classrooms to explore data on individual animals in our field studies (body size, sex, age, morphological traits, genetic profiles, home range size, microhabitat use, movement patterns, diet composition, etc.). Working with their teachers, students develop questions about our study animals, propose hypotheses, and design research projects to test their predictions using our data.