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.
South Burlington resident, Dr. Declan McCabe, SMC 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
Field work will be 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.
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.ining me