This past Friday, on April 12, the Cochise County Chief Science Officers visited the Coronado Dairy in Wilcox, Arizona during their exciting Spring Field Trip.
Shelby Kirk and Moiria White, who work at Coronado Dairy, hosted the Chief Science Officers for a two-hour tour of the Coronado Dairy business and learned everything from running a business to what a compost pile is. For example, they learned that the Coronado Dairy is family-owned, which is one of many that are family-owned in the United States. By one estimate, 97% of dairy farms are family-owned in the United States.
The students were able to learn about the Coronado Dairy’s history, the dairy workers’ passion for their job, and also they had a fun time visiting the cows, petting baby cows, and seeing the growth stages of the cows at the dairy farm.
After their informative and fun-filled tour, the students had a working lunch and discussed action plans with their advisors. They were excited to begin a new plan, agreeing to check Google Hangout for messages from the Cochise County Regional Lead to improve communication between themselves and their Regional Lead. The students led an organic discussion on their growing role within STEM, but also within their communities. They were also reminded that the elections for new CSO’s are underway for next year and will be finalized by May 1, 2019.
Then, the students participated in a STEM activity named “Touchdown,” where they needed to build a moon lander that would protect an astronaut upon landing. The students were split up into teams and only had twenty minutes to assemble a safe moon lander. Using materials such as marshmellows, a single ping pong ball, rubber bands, straws, one index card, one cup, a piece of 8 x 11 paper, a pair of scissors, and two long paces of tape, the students built a wide variety of moon landers and tested them. The students enjoyed working together, testing their moon landers, and seeing how others built their moon landers.
At the end, all the schools that visited Coronado Dairy, recommitted to attend the Spring Field Trip next year. All participants were extremely grateful to the hosts for hosting the Chief Science Officers and said that the Coronado Dairy staff “was amazing.”
Photo credit – CSO Alexis, CSO Rayne and CSO Advisor Nancy
