Project Title:
A Water Monitoring Project Enhancing Student Learning: Collaboration and Civic Engagement
Project Director and Other Associated Faculty and Staff:
Emily Deaver, Asst. Professor, Environmental Science, Southwest Minnesota State University, Contact: deaver@southwestmsu.edu. Telephone: (507)537-6171
Elizabeth Desy, Professor, Biology, Southwest Minnesota State University, Contact: desy@SouthwestMSU.edu, Tel.: (507)537-7315
Project Design:
The project sought to integrate water monitoring activities of students in SMSU biology, SMSU environmental sciences, Marshall High School, and Marshall Jr. High. After training a student to serve as the lab assistant, the ecology students were assigned to mentor 20 high school students and 40 7th grade students during onsite water monitoring events. As a result students are expected to learn new skills by teaching these skills to others. A section of the SMSU Science Dept. website was created to detail information on this projects and a permanent display of monitoring information is maintained at the SMSU Natural History Museum. This project is expected to engage students in active learning, teamwork, and using scientific techniques for data collection which promotes service learning.
Project Evaluation and Outcomes:
The outcomes of the project were: (1) Provide hands-on, field based experience for Biology and Environmental Science majors that has regional and statewide implications in management of water resources. (2) Demonstrate how cutting-edge technologies such as GPS and GIS are an integral part of data collection and analysis in natural sciences, (3) Incorporate service-learning as an ongoing part of Biology and Environment Sciences programs. These outcomes were evaluated by documenting activities of the project. During 2004-2005 academic year, 24 university students were in related Biology and Environmental Sciences courses and these students taught information on water monitoring to 94 high school students who in-turn taught 142 7th grade students. In October, 2004 and April 2005, two sampling sites were used where all students participated in a one day monitoring exercise. The data has been entered into a World Water Monitoring database and on a SMSU website. In May, 2005, a presentation was made to the community describing the findings and a permanent display created for the SMSU Natural History Museum.
Lessons Learned, Dissemination and Sustainability
The biggest challenge with the project was coordinating schedules of all participants (127 students in fall and 133 students in the spring and 4 instructors). Now that the program has been initiated, the framework and working relationships have been established so that the program can easily continue each semester as new students enroll in the university. The mentoring and water monitoring projects will be a permanent part of the Ecology lab and plans are to continue this into the future. In the future, closer coordination with MPCA will be provided to help them meet their data gathering needs.
