Upward and Onward

David : We never seem to run out of projects to be working on here at QERC. Sarah has been hard at work organizing and scanning the research papers written here from the past 20 years. The goal is to have digital copies of all papers so they can be accessed on the new and improved (and still uncreated) QERC website so students and researchers can view the work that has been done here. It will be a good online resource. Sarah has also been painting. Check out her handiwork on this sign that was already here but fairly unnoticeable. It looks much better now and as people come onto our property they will get a little better greeting than before.
I have been working on a smattering of projects. I have been working on my green thumb by sprucing up the landscaping on the grounds, hanging up newly acquired pictures, dry erase boards, and clocks (which is not easy because all of the wall are concrete), and starting the organization of the natural history museum. Sometimes a smattering of projects can be a problem for me. I see so many things I want to work on. I get many of them started and then there is a big mess of many uncompleted projects. My parents know all about this special characteristic of mine. Cassie, at Mission Springs, probably has an idea of it as well. The good news is that the projects always get finished. We have about three weeks to finish many of the small projects that we would like to get done and then the pace here at QERC is going to be changing drastically.
The month of December is going to full of friends and family visitors and then in January QERC is going to come to life with students. Southern Nazarene University is going to be sending 8-10 biology students down for the entire semester to work on research projects and take classes on this extension of their campus. Sarah and I are very excited and are happy that we have been able to be a part of making this happen. Because of our connection with LASP we have been able to help create a semester trial run of a LASP/SNU hybrid program. There is not much hope that it will continue how it will happen this next semester, but it is a good experiment to see in what capacity having students here will be the most successful. Needless to say, we are thrilled to be working with LASP as they are helping us at SNU out with this endeavor. It is going to be a victorious day for SNU when those students arrive and it marks a new era of usage of this facility. Everything is still in the works, of course, and we will see how all of it pans out, but for now there is a lot of excitement of what this means for QERC. All of our hard work so far is going to pay off big time. God has a unique way of bringing these types of things together.
It is still raining here for many hours throughout the day. But, we are still able to get out and find beautiful vistas, enchanting forests, and interesting critters. I thought we should share a few pictures of some these cool animals.