In a previous issue of our eNews, we featured the winner of NCSCE photo contest based on the theme of students engaged in active learning. As mentioned in that story, we received a lot of excellent submissions, leading to a very competitive voting process. Now, we’re sharing the top runners up with the community.
Today, we’re featuring a photo submitted and taken by Dr. Merrilee Anderson of Mount Aloysius College that shows students Pat Gully and Amber Ickes conducting research activities related to water quality analysis. Generally speaking, Dr. Anderson’s course research focuses on diatom identification and comparing diatom biodiversity in healthy systems and impaired systems such as abandoned mine drainage. Hughes Borehole is an abandoned mine site about 7 miles from campus and they’ve done extensive macroinvertebrate, water chemistry, and diatom sampling there. In terms of civic engagement, Dr. Anderson’s team has partnered with community members and organizations to share information about water quality, has developed teaching modules for high school students to compare biodiversity at various sites, and has provided prepared slides for them to use.
Thank you again to all of you who took the time to send in photos that communicate the student experience in SENCER courses!