In slow shoulder season, Science on Tap draws huge crowds

When Science on Tap began, organizers Hilary and Shawn Devlin thought it might garner 15 to 20 science-oriented people that were already familiar faces at the Flathead Lake Biological Station.

Turns out, there was a thirst for science that had been going unquenched for many in the Flathead Valley.

“Great beer never hurts, and great science really helps,” said Hilary Devlin, one of the event’s organizers. “It just gives us a different feel than science in a banquet room that could be anywhere.”

The monthly meet ups at Flathead Lake Brewing Company in Bigfork have been garnering huge crowds for about three years now, even at times of year where it is difficult to get that many people to show up to anything happening in the valley, let alone the normally sleepy town of Bigfork in the heart of winter.

People gather, enjoy a pint or two and listen to a different speaker brought in from the science world to talk about their field for around an hour. Afterward, many stick around for dinner and to digest what they just learned.

The speaker series is a collaboration between the Flathead Lake Biological Station, which is affiliated with the University of Montana, and the Flathead Lakers, a non-profit organization that advocates for community stewardship of water quality and healthy ecosystems in and around Flathead Lake.

It was born out of Shawn Devlin’s background in Wisconsin, where events like this were quite common. When he moved to Montana with his wife Hilary, they noticed both a thriving science scene and a burgeoning brewery scene around the lake. It presented an opportunity to meld the two and help area residents appreciate the quality research that was happening in their backyard.

On Tuesday night it was Lisa Bate, a biologist from Glacier National Park, who regaled the packed house with tales about the park’s groundbreaking research on Harlequin ducks in recent years.

Little was known about the way the species behaved in the area prior to Bate taking it on with a graduate student, with help from other biologists in the area. Turns out that once they started banding and tracking the ducks, there were far more than they ever expected, and they behaved in ways no one would have predicted prior to the studies.

After about a 40-minute presentation, the crowd peppered Bate with questions about the ducks and the methods the researchers used to study them.

Hilary Devlin, who is the education and outreach coordinator with the Flathead Lakers, said researchers consistently tell her that they hear better questions from these brewery talks than they do from presentations they give on university campuses.

The same can be said for the size of the crowd the event draws, said Tom Bansak, assistant director at the biological station. It exceeded their expectations from the first year, and shows there is definitely a demand for this kind of academic programming, even in a region without a major university.

“Interestingly, the turnout for science on tap in the Flathead has been larger than the turnout for larger university towns like Madison, Wisconsin,” Bansak said. “We are not a university town, so there isn’t a lot of academic stuff going on in the Flathead. Especially in the winter, people around here are hungry to learn things.”

The programming always happens on the first Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. It will continue to be held at Flathead Lake Brewing Company in Bigfork through the spring, and the organizers are looking to secure larger venues around the valley for the summer.

The April presentation will be on research Shawn Devlin has been conducting on freshwater lakes in Antarctica. More information on the program and the upcoming schedule can be found at http://www.scienceontapflathead.org/.

Reporter Peregrine Frissell can be reached at (406) 758-4438 or pfrissell@dailyinterlake.com.