CONWAY, Ark. (April 29, 2009) – Hendrix College student Erica Siebrasse was named to USA Today’s 2009 All-USA College Academic Second Team today, acknowledging her work creating Ridin’ Dirty with Science, a fun science summer camp for elementary school children.

Siebrasse, a senior from Parsons, Kan., helped establish the camp in Conway in 2007 through the college’s Odyssey Program. Last summer, she received another Odyssey grant to take Ridin’ Dirty with Science to her hometown, where she taught children in Parsons how science can be fun through interesting experiences and observations.

USA Today annually selects top college students nationwide for their academic accomplishments based on their intellectual endeavors, community service and campus leadership; they all boast high grade-point averages, campus honors and prestigious prizes. Collectively, they have amassed more than a dozen national awards; four are Rhodes Scholars, and eight are members of Phi Beta Kappa national honor society.

Ridin’ Dirty with Science is a free, two-day science camp for local area students. Through a series of fun lab experiments, participants learn the basic scientific principles that affect their everyday lives—especially the ‘dirty stuff’ like bacteria and grease. The program’s primary goal is to encourage children to enjoy science, and it is a collaboration between Hendrix students and the Boys and Girls Club of Faulkner County.

The program has been immensely successful, gaining interest from when it was first created. More than 40 students participated in Ridin’ Dirty with Science in 2008, and it grew from just a few college student leaders in 2007 to more than 20 volunteer Hendrix students lat summer, mostly chemistry, biology and biochemistry majors.

In the state-of-the-art Cell Biology laboratories on the Hendrix campus, students complete projects such as the “Limonene from Orange Peel” which shows how oranges can turn into household cleaners, and the “Caught Dirty Handed” experiment where students study the bacteria commonly found on the skin.

Hendrix College, founded in 1876, is an undergraduate liberal arts college emphasizing experiential learning in a demanding yet supportive environment. The college is among 165 colleges featured in the 2009 edition of the Princeton Review America’s Best Value Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.