Fifth-graders were busy last week. The 10- and 11-year-olds were preparing for careers as nurses, doctors and medical technicians.

A class from Banfield Elementary visited Riverland Community College Friday afternoon to do a bit of nursing study in the biology and simulation labs. This is the second year all of Austin’s fifth-grade students visited Riverland to work with Dr. Al Erdahl in the biology lab and view the simulators — high-tech body dummies — that nursing students work with.

“The objective is to expose the young students to different health care careers, and the different courses one would have to take,” said Amy Wangen, project manager at Riverland.

The fifth-graders are brought to Riverland as a result of a $1 million Community-Based Job Training grant that the college secured from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2008. The grant also funds free online nursing courses at the college and pre-employment health care academies through Workforce Development. In addition, it will fund the fifth-grade trips next year.

“It’s a fun field trip,” fifth-grader Ally Wood said, while looking through a microscope in Erdahl’s lab. “It’s really cool.”

Banfield fifth grade teacher Kim Richardson explained, “They just love it. We don’t have microscopes of this power in our rooms, so this is really great for them.”

Erdahl showed the students the letter E, the leg of a fly, a worm, corn, a mosquito and pond water under the microscopes Friday with the aid of his nursing students.

“I always loved working with scopes as a kid, and it’s fun to share that with these students,” said Debra Tuma, a nursing student working toward her RN at Riverland.

“It’s about getting them interested in science now,” Erdahl explained of his method. “These will the health care students or workers 10 years from now — Right now we just want them to get excited about and interested in science.”

He continued, “It’s not a hard lesson today. We just want to spark that interest and keep that interest going.”