Undergraduate
Saint Michael's hosts 51 high schoolers training in stream ecology with the Vt EPSCoR Streams Project
High school students and their teachers will do hands-on research at Saint Michael's
Contact Information:
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
Students and teachers from 16 high schools in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Puerto Rico will be in Saint Michael's College biology labs and area streams, June 28 to July 2, to learn cutting-edge techniques in streams ecology. In the 2nd annual Streams Project High School Program sponsored by Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Vt. EPSCoR), students and their teachers will do hands-on research.
Dr. Declan McCabe, Saint Michael's associate professor of biology, and Middlebury professor Sally Sheldon are co-directors of the summer Streams Project.
The visiting high school students will spend the week working with college faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. They will take the skills they learn back home to either sample streams close to their schools or to participate in data analysis and modeling by using the data produced through the Streams Project.
The young scientists will be assisted by Saint Michael's biology students: Alexandra Canepa of Lakewood, Ohio; Daniel Caredeo of Salem, N.H.; Brian Cunningham of Quincy, Mass.; Tyler Gillingham of North Pomfret, Vt., Bridget Levine of Allentown, N.J., and Natasha Skrzypek of Southampton, Mass. Also assisting are UVM biology students Erin Margaret Hayes-Pontius and Kaitlyn Berry.
Program schedule
Visiting students and teachers will reside in a Saint Michael's residence hall for the week. The program opens Sunday evening with an outdoor Challenge Course Adventure. On Monday work begins with lectures on watershed ecology and Lake Champlain, an introduction to stream ecology, presentation on last year's findings and plans for this year, with attention to high school curricula, and a field trip to a farm to pursue agricultural water resource protection.
Tuesday will be field work at Vermont streams - Lewis Creek in Charlotte, Potash Brook, an urban impacted site in S. Burlington; Indian Brook in Colchester, Monroe Brook in South Burlington, a mixed urban site, and probably the LaPlatte River. In the evening the students will tour wastewater and stormwater treatment facilities. On Wednesday they will focus on sorting and identifying samples in the macroinvertebrate lab at Saint Michael's. The day will conclude with a Winooski River kayaking tour or a trip on a Lake Champlain Research Vessel. Thursday will include three training sessions at Saint Michael's focusing on using the Streams Project data base, designing projects, and recapping the week.
VT EPSCoR Streams Project
The VT EPSCoR Streams Project is a long-term, data-collection and analysis research project on the streams in the Lake Champlain watershed designed to find solutions to the pollution in our waterways. This is the 2nd year of a three year data-collection project of high school students, teachers, undergraduates and faculty. The project will provide a means of doing complex systems modeling to determine what issues are threatening Lake Champlain, while also training members of a future workforce equipped to tackle these problems in the future.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Photo caption: Saint Michael's biology students working on the EPSCOR Streams Project:Alex Canepa, and Ian Myers, May graduate, who worked on the project last year and is now an environmental consultant in St. Albans
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
Students and teachers from 16 high schools in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Puerto Rico will be in Saint Michael's College biology labs and area streams, June 28 to July 2, to learn cutting-edge techniques in streams ecology. In the 2nd annual Streams Project High School Program sponsored by Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Vt. EPSCoR), students and their teachers will do hands-on research.Dr. Declan McCabe, Saint Michael's associate professor of biology, and Middlebury professor Sally Sheldon are co-directors of the summer Streams Project.
The visiting high school students will spend the week working with college faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. They will take the skills they learn back home to either sample streams close to their schools or to participate in data analysis and modeling by using the data produced through the Streams Project.
The young scientists will be assisted by Saint Michael's biology students: Alexandra Canepa of Lakewood, Ohio; Daniel Caredeo of Salem, N.H.; Brian Cunningham of Quincy, Mass.; Tyler Gillingham of North Pomfret, Vt., Bridget Levine of Allentown, N.J., and Natasha Skrzypek of Southampton, Mass. Also assisting are UVM biology students Erin Margaret Hayes-Pontius and Kaitlyn Berry.
Program schedule
Visiting students and teachers will reside in a Saint Michael's residence hall for the week. The program opens Sunday evening with an outdoor Challenge Course Adventure. On Monday work begins with lectures on watershed ecology and Lake Champlain, an introduction to stream ecology, presentation on last year's findings and plans for this year, with attention to high school curricula, and a field trip to a farm to pursue agricultural water resource protection.
Tuesday will be field work at Vermont streams - Lewis Creek in Charlotte, Potash Brook, an urban impacted site in S. Burlington; Indian Brook in Colchester, Monroe Brook in South Burlington, a mixed urban site, and probably the LaPlatte River. In the evening the students will tour wastewater and stormwater treatment facilities. On Wednesday they will focus on sorting and identifying samples in the macroinvertebrate lab at Saint Michael's. The day will conclude with a Winooski River kayaking tour or a trip on a Lake Champlain Research Vessel. Thursday will include three training sessions at Saint Michael's focusing on using the Streams Project data base, designing projects, and recapping the week.
VT EPSCoR Streams Project
The VT EPSCoR Streams Project is a long-term, data-collection and analysis research project on the streams in the Lake Champlain watershed designed to find solutions to the pollution in our waterways. This is the 2nd year of a three year data-collection project of high school students, teachers, undergraduates and faculty. The project will provide a means of doing complex systems modeling to determine what issues are threatening Lake Champlain, while also training members of a future workforce equipped to tackle these problems in the future.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Photo caption: Saint Michael's biology students working on the EPSCOR Streams Project:Alex Canepa, and Ian Myers, May graduate, who worked on the project last year and is now an environmental consultant in St. Albans
