Dodd, Courtney help Mystic Aquarium land $282,000 for science program for children, The Day

Dodd, Courtney help Mystic Aquarium land $282,000 for science program for children

Jenna Cho

The Day

9/6/2008

New London - Boys played football in the courtyard of the Thames River Apartments Friday afternoon with little regard for the adults milling around in business suits.

Suit One just happened to be U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. And Suit Two was U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District.

The two were at the public housing complex for a tour of the Boys and Girls Club of Southeastern Connecticut's new site, which opened in the complex's Building C in July.

There, Dodd announced that he and Courtney had helped secure $282,000 in federal funds for Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration's national Immersion Presents science program, with which the Boys and Girls Club partners for children all over the country.

”It's not a huge amount of money,” Dodd said of the funds, “but it makes a big difference in places like this.”

He joked, “Joe has already promised he's going to get all the extra money you need.”

Immersion Presents is a nonprofit program founded in 2002 by Mystic Aquarium president and CEO Stephen Coan and Institute for Exploration president Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic wreckage.

The program, designed to stimulate children's interests in science, has given participants of the Boys and Girls Club hands-on activities meant to stimulate their interest in the sciences. Most of the children in the New London Boys and Girls Club are from low-income families who might not otherwise have such opportunities.

On Friday afternoon, club members were trying to figure out how to build clay boats to withstand the weight of pennies - an Immersion Presents activity.

”Who's making my boat?” Dodd asked the children. Tyson McNeil, 8, and Shawn Brown, 11, explained that they'd thus far managed to land 12 pennies on their blue clay boat before it sank in water.

Later, they made structural improvements to the boat while Dodd took a tour of the club's site, bringing the new number to 15.

Also at the complex for the visit were Dodd's wife Jackie Clegg-Dodd; Coan; Peter Glankoff, a senior vice president at Mystic Aquarium; Joseph Abrams, executive director of the New London Housing Authority; Lisa Sullivan, director of the Front Porch Foundation; and Ellen Roman, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Southeastern Connecticut.