It’s not always about the latest software or lab equipment, though. French professor Jane Kaplan and assistant professor of music Diane Birr present a very popular program for third through sixth graders called "The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant, in Words and Music."

"The French composer Poulenc wrote music for his niece and nephew about Babar," Kaplan explains. "Diane gives a little introduction and shows the children what to listen for in the music --- ‘this sounds like a car, this is like someone getting fussed at, this sounds like surprise, this sounds like a gun, this is like sadness.’ Diane plays the music, and I tell the story."

Kaplan obviously enjoys presenting this piece. "All teachers are hams," she says with a smile, "so when I tell the story I try to assume the role of whoever is talking."

Kaplan says she’s involved with the partnership program for both "noble and personal" reasons. "Young kids are losing a good deal of the cultural elements that were a rich part of kids’ lives 20 years ago," she says. "Classical music is diminishing. Kids don’t read anymore; they watch videos. This is one way to give them a chance to hear something they might not otherwise hear at all, in the hope of awakening their interest to want more --- more reading, more stories, more listening, more music. And I think that the partnership itself is admirable, not only for kids, but for us on a college level. Unless you have children of that age, you tend to forget what it’s like to teach somebody who’s eight, what you have to do to get them to understand and to keep them interested."

Associate professor of anthropology Michael Malpass offers programs about the development of cultures in Mexico and Peru and does a presentation on human evolution. For this he brings copies of primitive tools and casts of the skulls of our early ancestors.

"I show them the skulls and talk about the general trends in human evolution. For the programs about the Mayas and Aztecs, I show slides and talk about their architecture, their religion, their social systems, and how people made a living. Often the teachers tell me what specific information they’d like me to cover. I have a general outline, then fill in the details they’d like."