Manchester Palaeontology Society.
So, to carry on from the last post, we should probably tell you about the soiceity we set up. Originally this was just a name to attach to talks we were giving in the department, but it has grown somewhat.
Through our external research links into the engineering faculty, we were approached by an engineering in schools project. So, myself and Karl put together an hour long session involving dinosaur tracks and a T-rex leg to wow young children in schools. We went to three schools, and gave our session to 4 classes in each. It was actually really quite rewarding seeing the kid’s get excited over dinosaurs (in that respect palaeontologists often have more in common with children than other adults!).
So, we’ve developed a program we intend to take to other schools and museums when required. Indeed, tomorrow I’m heading to the Yorkshire museum to fly the manchester flag and take part in an open day, with a stall set up to provide the session we’ve developed here.
To make all of this more coherent, we’ve decided to mak our society a ‘proper’ society, open to all members of the university. This involves filling out an application pack from the union. Unfortunately, odd rules make things more complicated than we thought – to become a society, we need a form with at least 30 names and student numbers. However, we aren’t garaunteed a stall at fresher’s fair if we haven’t been a registered society for a year… so we have a small catch 22 in that we need students to become a society, but we need to be a society to be able to get students! What this means is that September/October time, we’ll be visiting classes in earth sciences and biological sciences to get enough students, and then opening up to the university fully next year.
A bonefied union society is something worth pursuing though. As a society, we will be able to open a society bank account, which means sponsors will have a more formal name to send money to, rather than it looking like one of us is pocketing the money. We also open up a new funding avenue – the union provides upto £2.50 for each student in our society towards such things as bringing in external speakers, perfect for inviting potentia viz suite users up to give a talk and check their work in the viz suite before prog pal next year.
We’ve filled out all the forms needed by the union. All that waits to be done now is the collection of 30 student numbers and emails addresses.
Peter
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