Oxbow Meadows Environmental Learning Center staff and Columbus State University students, in conjunction with Columbus Water Works, will provide family-focused activities, food and entertainment from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11. This event is free and open to the public.

Throughout the day, visitors can meet representatives from various local organizations dedicated to environmental conservation, enjoy face painting and bouncy houses, and interact with native and exotic wildlife.  Chilidogs and ice cream will also be available.

“Oxbow Meadows offers programs from the birds to the bees and from the gators to the turtles — and likely everything in between,” said Dr. Michael Dentzau, a professor and the center’s executive director. “For three decades, our mission has been educating, inspiring and empowering all people by engaging them with nature and the environment.”

On-site programs throughout the year highlight all that the center has to offer visitors, including its Natural History Discovery Center, indoor and outdoor exhibits featuring living reptiles and fish, a stream habitat that supports a variety of plants and animals, a pollinator garden, bee hives, environmental art, a classroom and an auditorium.

Dentzau credits the university’s many donors with helping those spaces grow and flourish during the last 12 years he has served as director. Most notably, those include the 2.5-mile Walt and Frank Chambers Birding Trail that opened in October 2023, a recirculating pond for young scientists to explore pond life close up, an outdoor habitat for rescued gopher tortoises, an interactive “Discovery Forest” children’s play area, a team-building low elements course, and a research-grade weather station.

Many of the center’s staff, including Dentzau, also teach in various university disciplines—ranging from their areas of scientific expertise to teacher education programs that prepare future K-12 educators. In that regard, he said, Oxbow Meadows provides current Columbus State students with field-based experiences—sharing what they learn in the classroom with the center’s younger visitors who represent the next generation of ecologists, biologists, botanists and zoologists.

“Oxbow Meadows is as much a classroom for our college students preparing for careers in their respective science and education fields as it is for the curious youth visitors who participate in our programs,” Dentzau said. “As we help to reinforce what they learn in their degree programs, they’re in turn inspiring an entirely new group following in their inquisitive footsteps.”