Thanks to a grant made possible by Target, 14 eighth-grade students from Northeast Elementary School visited East Carolina University on March 9.

The grant was written by music teacher Dawn Wilson in an effort to bridge classroom information with a theater unit she teaches with real-world application. The field trip included a private tour of the theater department, including the auditorium, back stage, wood shop, light shop, paint shop and costume shop. Jeff Woodruff, the managing director, explained all of the personnel and skills necessary to put on a production. Following this was a campus tour led by an ECU sports-medicine student.  After a quick bite to eat at the Greenville Mall, the students enjoyed a showing of “ArcAttack!” (a science/music show) at Wright Auditorium. The highlight of the trip was when one student, Alexis Garcia, was chosen to go onto the stage and get into a box that was zapped with more than a million volts of electricity. In his words, the experience was “amazing.”

These are the JCTES students who earned honorable-mention status in the recent Beaufort County Arts Council’s Student Art Show. (BCS Photo)