— Filed by Abigail Connolly, WRVO 89.9 FM NPR News

Oswego, NY, July 11, 2023 - Seven teachers from New York are spending a week on Lake Ontario conducting research and developing new lesson plans for their students.

As part of the Lake Ontario Shipboard Science Program hosted by New York Sea Grant, the teachers are collecting data alongside research scientists, learning more about the scientific process and Great Lakes ecology.

For Barbra Bibbins, who teaches science in the Belleville-Henderson Central School District, the program gives her the opportunity to talk about local areas with her students.

“We are always talking about somewhere else,” Bibbins said. “And if I can get [students] to focus locally first, it enables them to have a touchstone to go back and understand the world around them.”

Greg Boyer, SUNY ESF biochemistry professor emeritus, and research scientist aboard the Lake Guardian research vessel, said the teachers are actively participating in data collection that assists the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“For the five research scientists on board, this is data that goes right, directly into our research,” Boyer said.

In addition to data collection, the educators onboard are working with New York Sea Grant literacy specialists to develop lesson plans and curricula to take back to their classrooms. Boyer, who has been on eight of these expeditions, said it is always a fun experience figuring out ways to help teachers both in the classroom and on the research team.

“We try to give them practical experiments and things that they can take back, but at the same time we try to give them the experience of what it’s like to work on a research vessel,” Boyer said.

Bibbins said being able to work with so many other teachers has been a rewarding experience.

“It ends up being just this big share session,” Bibbins said. “And sometimes even when we are just waiting for a net to come up, we are talking about how we would use this in our classroom. I learned so much from other teachers that those opportunities are a really big deal.”

Data collection on the Lake Guardian covered everything from invasive species to chemical contaminants.

WRVO FM, part of the National Public Radio digital network, is based on the campus of SUNY Oswego and broadcasts as follows: WRVO Oswego 89.9, Syracuse 90.3, Watertown 91.7, Clayton 89.3.

For more on the 2023 Shipboard Science Workshop, including insights from the educators onboard, see NYSG's pre-workshop press release, "Educators to Learn from Scientists and NY Sea Grant Aboard Ship on Lake Ontario". There's also NYSG's post-media analysis news item, "On YouTube, On Air: Teachers Learn Aboard the Lake Guardian".


The U.S. EPA research vessel, Lake Guardian, at a stop in Oswego while on the Lake Ontario Shipboard Science Program journey. Credit: Abigail Connolly/WRVO

Additional video and audio clips related to this workshop can be found below ... 




More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.