It may come as a surprise to many that Columbia is home to a chapter of The Explorers Club founded in New York in May of 1904 by an esteemed body of the world's leading explorers. The organization is a multidisciplinary, professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research, scientific exploration, and the ideal that preserving the instinct to explore is vital.

The Explorers Club has some 3,000 members from every continent and more than 50 countries with 30 chapters scattered around the world. The Greater Piedmont Chapter was founded by Dr. George Fulton, a specialist in microbiology, Horace Byrne, a veteran officer in the US Foreign Service, and Jim Jackson, producer and director of the Lowell Thomas Remembers series for SCETV.

Learn more about the club and the work of the Greater Piedmont Chapter in a Sunday afternoon session with members of the club May 17 from 3- 4:30 pm at the Bostick Auditorium, RCPL, on Assembly

Street. Adventures, Explorations

and E xpeditions will be hosted by RCPL Literary Resident Jim Welch, of the

NatureScene television series and a past chair of the Greater Piedmont Chapter.

John Adams Hodge, will share his adventures trekking by horseback in the High Andes of Chile. John is the current chair of the chapter.

Jonathan Leader, vice- chair of Greater Piedmont is the state archaeologist and research professor at the USC Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and will speak on one of his past expeditions in the ancient Near East, Micronesia and the Eastern United States.

Dr. Bill Vartorella, a fellow in both The Explorers Club and the Royal Geographic Society, has worked on exotic projects in Egypt, Venezuela, Romania, Brazil, Guyana, Canada, and the U.S. including archaeology, endangered species, bio- diversity, marine sciences and a score of other disciplines.

Janet Ciegler, one of the state's leading coleopterists has published books on keys and descriptions to the South Carolina ground beetles, S.C. water beetles and leaf beetles. Jan was part of an expedition collecting aquatic insects in the Selenge basin of Mongolia.

David Brinkman is a historian, researcher, writer, documentary film producer. He has produced volumes of study on WWII Navy Ships and Civil War

History including Broad

River Bridges, Ferries and

Cannons.

The afternoon of

Adventures, Explorations

and Expedition s will give those attending a chance to meet with and talk with explorers about the many disciplines of field sciences they represent from archaeology to zoology.

For more information on The Explorers Club visit the website at www.explorers. org and for news of the Greater Piedmont Chapter go to www.gpexplorers.org.