Hi all! I am a native Michigander who made the leap west in 2011 to pursue a M.S. in Aquatic Ecology at Utah State University. I then moved down to Flagstaff to work as a Colorado River Fish Biologist in Grand Canyon, where I discovered the beauty of the desert as well as a love for Ponderosa pines and Abert’s squirrels. As the Citizen Science Volunteer Coordinator with Grand Canyon Trust, I look forward to creating stewards and advocates for the unique landscape, water, and wildlife of the Colorado Plateau. I am particularly passionate about making scientific research more accessible to the public and spreading my curiosity and joy of nature with others. In this next year, I hope to contribute to the Flagstaff STEM community, connect people with our amazing natural surroundings, and encourage the next generation of conservationists. If not chasing leopard frogs and garter snakes for work, you can likely find me hiking in our national parks, baking something sweet, pretending to be a runner, or crafting something I saw on Etsy.
0 Comments
Guest post by Lisa Winters, formerly of Arizona Game and Fish, and presently a STEM VISTA Member with the Grand Canyon Trust The best ten days of the year, the Flagstaff Festival of Science, is in full swing. And this year, we had the first BioBlitz at Francis Short Pond! Organized by Rocky Mountain Research Station, Willow Bend Environmental Education Center, and Friends of the Rio de Flag, the BioBlitz was an opportunity for students, teachers, and the general public to work in collaboration with biologists, naturalists, and other scientists to complete a biological inventory of the plants, animals, and organisms that live in or near the pond. Thanks to Lisa Winters, left, of Grand Canyon Trust, and Zack Zdinak, right, of Life Drawing and Education Stations were set up around the pond that collected information about water quality, aquatic insects, birds, plants, and fish. Over 260 students from Marshall Elementary, Flagstaff Junior Academy, and Mount Elden Middle School measured the temperature and dissolved oxygen of the water, used microscopes to identify the aquatic invertebrates they caught, wandered the pond in search of common plants, used binoculars to spot ducks and red-winged blackbirds, fished for rainbow trout, and then pulled together what they learned by constructing a life cycle diagram of an organism of their choice. In the afternoon, many community members got the same chance to explore this unique ecosystem in their backyard while contributing to the survey data collection. Photos show Alice patiently fishing, the excitement of the catch, and measuring for data prior to release! Additional partners of the event include the City of Flagstaff Sustainability Section, The Museum of Northern Arizona, Grand Canyon Trust, local illustrator Zack Zdinak, and more! The event was made possible through a generous grant from the National Geographic Education Foundation and the AZ Game and Fish Heritage Grant. Thank you all for the great contributions to citizen science and education in Flagstaff!
Guest Post by Moran Henn, Executive Director, Willow Bend Environmental Education Center What better way to help celebrate Colorado River Days than kiss some fish!? That’s just what some lucky kids (and a few brave parents) got to do thanks to Colorado River Days’ Annual Fish and Watersheds Science Saturday at Willow Bend event. This free, all ages event focused on the importance of the Colorado River, healthy watersheds, and native fish. Participants engaged in hands-on activities organized by numerous event partners who came together to make the event a great success. Activities included making paper watersheds with the AZ Trail Association, creating nature journals to record drawings and stamps of wildlife and nature with the Sierra Club, watching the far reaching effects of water-flow on a 3D terrain model and learning how long objects last in ecosystems when left behind with Oak Creek Watershed Council, making origami boats and rowing in a real river ducky with Grand Canyon Youth, learning about the ecology of aquatic worms and snails with Friends of the Rio, seeing the effects of rain on the watershed with Willow Bend, and the highlight of the event... meeting live native fish up close and in person with the USGS aquatic lab team. Over 4 species of native fish were on display, including the Humpback Chub and Rainbow Trout. The public experienced, in a fun and engaging way, just how important the Colorado River is, not just to Flagstaff, but to everyone who depends on healthy flowing rivers.
Information on other Colorado River Days activities can be found here, and consider subscribing to Willow Bend's newsletter to stay informed about upcoming Science Saturday programs and other events. The 4th grade students at Killip Elementary School have been studying alternative energy systems to determine what energy source would be the best for their school and neighborhood. The three teachers (Mrs.’s Hansen, Hart, and Taylor) have over 90 energetic students participating in this unit! Note that they will soon have a fourth teacher to reduce class sizes. Three Flagstaff STEM Professionals presented three 25-minute sessions to the classes. Kelly Paduchowski from Prometheus SOLAR brought in a large solar panel, and talked to the students about the great solar energy potential in Arizona. Kelly is a Project Manager at Promethus Solar. She is also a certified photovoltaic installation professional. Kelly has been highlighted in a previous post when she represented Prometheus at Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. Ken Kotalik from Primus Wind Power brought in a wind turbine and talked to the students about having both gride-tied wind power and also off-the-grid wind systems that could also include solar panels. Ken is the Director of North American Sales, for Primus Wind Power. He has been working in and around the renewable energy field for 15 years and he built his own passive and active solar straw bale house in Flagstaff. Lucas Bair, from the Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center of the US Geological Survey, showed a video on hydropower and illustrated to students how a dam works to generate electric power. Lucas is an environmental and natural resource economist with expertise in water resource and energy economics and policy. His research includes natural resource valuation and decision and benefit-cost analysis with a focus on resources in Glen and Grand Canyons along with large river systems such as the Sacramento-San Joaquin and the Brazilian Amazon. STEM City and Killip Elementary School thank you for your educational and engaging presentations to the students! Stay tuned, as the students are now finalizing their reports on which of these three alternative energy sources should be used to power their school and neighborhood!
Guest Blog by Susan Holiday The Arboretum's Eco Explorers Summer Camp is a series of camps that began on June 13th and continues until July 22st. There are weekly programs at three age levels: 4-5, 6-8, and 9-13. While camps cost between $160 (half day) to $250 (full day), the Arboretum was able to offer 30 full and/or partial scholarships through a generous contribution from the W.L. Gore Foundation. The camps included the Creature Camp, where the Dr. Aaron Smith brought some of his invertebrates from the Arthropod Museum at N.A.U. Other activities included meeting a miniature horse, the butterfly house and plenty of hiking and other outdoor activities.
The camps also included Wild Things!, Our Changing World, Natures Keepers, Gross Science and the coming camp Nature’s Artists. If you missed the camps this year, there will be camps again next year. Hope to see you then! Information can be found at http://www.thearb.org/learn/summer-camps/ Two STEM City Stars have received their advanced degrees from NAU. Sarah Burcher earned her Master's degree on April 20th and Aaron Tabor received his Doctorate on April 27th. Congratulations!
Aaron worked with Dr. Rob Kellar in both the NAU Tissue Engineering & Regenerative (TERM) Lab as well as at Development Engineering Sciences. His dissertation research was on using plate-rich-plasma on an electrospun collagen scaffold to aid in full thickness wound healing. Aaron also serves as an instructor at both Coconino Community College and Northern Arizona University! You can read more about Sarah's and Aaron's contributions to STEM City and Killip Elementary School in this post from just over a year ago!
Guest blog by Carrie Jenkins and Rick Treadway, 7th grade science teachers at Sinagua Middle School On April 11, 2016 a group of 48 Sinagua Middle School 7th graders headed into Oak Creek Canyon for an afternoon of water testing at Slide Rock State Park. After eating lunch at the park, we walked to the Apple Barn where we watched a short documentary about Oak Creek called “Loved to Death: The Story of Oak Creek.” The video documented the 2014 Oak Creek Ambassador Program in which concerned citizens with the support of local university students from U of A, NAU, ASU, and the Friends of Oak Creek, removed large quantities of trash brought into the park and along the creek. Oak Creek is claimed to be the 3rd purest water in the world at its source. However, the trash left behind by the hundreds of thousands of visitors each year directly impacts the water quality of Oak Creek and leads to increased levels of e. coli causing adverse effects to the local ecosystem. Under the direction of U of A microbiologists in a mobile laboratory the students tested E.coli bacteria levels, water flow rates, pH, turbidity, nitrates and dissolved oxygen. Students learned proper water sampling protocol, testing procedures and levels that indicate healthy conditions for organisms within the aquatic ecosystem. Most importantly, we learned that we can each be an ambassador for Oak Creek. Thank you to the SFAz+8 Pathways grant through Coconino Community College for funding the bus for this fieldtrip!
Superbowl of STEM The 3rd Annual Flagstaff Community STEM Celebration kicked off the week on Monday, March 7th at the NAU Skydome with almost every school, STEM business, government agency, and non-profit in Flagstaff! You can relive the excitement with Flg4TV's 2 minute video here! High-Altitude Balloon Launch On Wednesday, March 9th, Teacher Kaci Heins and 100 NPA 6th graders sent their payload to over 106,000 feet on a high-altitude balloon from the Flagstaff Airport. Community Leader Bruce Sidlinger and his Aeronautics Engineering class from Flag High, Airport Director Barney Helmick, the Coconino Amateur Radio Club, the Civil Air Patrol, and many other community partners were there to assist. You can see images and hear the story from KNAU's science and technology field reporter Melissa Sevigny here. Women Executives in STEM Panel NAU hosted the panel on Thursday, March 10th. All of the women had connections to NAU and facilitator Elizabeth Glass recommended that the many students in attendance use their alumni network as they search career opportunities. AZ North Regional The Skydome was brimming again on Friday and Saturday with the CocoNuts and 52 other teams, for NAU's inaugural FIRST Robotics Arizona North Regional contest, which pitted robots against each other to try to take down a castle. You can read Corina Vanek's article on the event here. Microchip sponsored pit tours by volunteers from many of the teams, as well as a VIP luncheon that was well-attended by Flagstaff's government, business, and education leaders. FIRST, which stands for --- , is a non-profit founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway. It encourages students to pursue STEM and also develops skills in teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, and gracious professionalism. Congratulations to everyone on helping make STEM Week 2016 the best ever in Flagstaff STEM City!
STEM City Coordinator Mindy Bell took Swedish science museum educator Kajsa Berg on a tour to some of STEM City's (aka Flagstaff's) STEM education sites. Kajsa is visiting as half of an exchange established by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce. 6th grade science teacher Kaci Heins, from Northland Preparatory Academy, is the American half. You can read more about the goals of the exchange at their blog. We began the tour at Sinagua Middle School. Teachers Gretchen Downey, Carrie Jenkins, Jenna Samora, Kathryn Wertz, and Jillian Worssam showcased student-centered learning in engineering musical instruments with recycled materials, plate tectonics with graham crackers, coding at your own pace, creating models of human systems, and doing investigations with dry ice respectively!
Flagstaff Junior Academy is in the ol' Flagstaff Middle School building by the pond. We visited science and math teachers Elii Chapman, Todd Saunders, and Heather Berginc. Kajsa was taken by the open format of the middle school, popular at the time the school was built!
We had a great time touring STEM City! If you want to know more about great STEM sites to visit in STEM City, please contact the STEM Coordinator.
Marsha Reynolds, 5th grade teacher, and Jessica Soifer, Art teacher, have partnered for an after school 5th grade STEAM Club that has students engaged in numerous projects. Marsha borrowed Flagstaff STEM City's Engineering Adventures Kit on Rockets and Rovers called "Lift Off". Note: Look here if you are also interested in borrowing an engineering kit! Marsha Reynolds writes: "Both Mrs. Soifer and I have been privileged to help lead the 5th grade STEAM club at Knoles Elementary. We enjoy working with a dedicated group of students who are interested in science, art, engineering and technology and on top of that, are willing to stay after school once a week for the activities we provide. These students are creative, and do a wonderful job of persevering through the projects that we introduce." These dedicated teachers also bring in other professionals. Tenielle Gaither, from the USGS Astrogeology Center, observed students building their rovers. And Jeff Jones, the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Coconino Community College, brought in a 3D Printer and students learned how to use the printer to create something original. Jessica Soifer writes: "The motivation behind STEAM club is our dedicated students. The students show up once a week after school with eyes wide open and execute the daily projects. We have designed our lessons to ensure the students are exploring a range of content among Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. The students explore through experiential learning, discover new ideas and designs, while problem solving, working collaboratively, and having fun. Marsha Reynolds and I work well together. We each have different strengths that compliment each other to bring success to the STEAM club. We collaborate and provide an easy going vibe and flexibility to facilitate a fun and exciting learning environment for all students."
Congratulations to this successful collaboration that has so many students happily engaged in such a variety of projects in their after school STEAM Club! |