Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
BURLINGTON — More than 1,000 pounds of scientific equipment hung over the side of a research vessel in Lake Champlain, where two Vermont high school students were getting their first taste of professional scientific research.
That June morning, the highschoolers were aboard the Marcelle Melosira, a University of Vermont research vessel that had set out to sample and study microscopic aquatic animals known as rotifers. Twice a month this summer, the students will join a team of seven professional scientists on the boat to categorize the plankton and assess the best way to collect them.
The program, which is running for the first time this summer, is meant to give high school students a taste of what a career in the sciences could look like.
“There’s nothing that can replace working in the field,” said Ashley Eaton, watershed and lake education coordinator for the Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute, which is running the program. “It really provides this transformative experience for students to think about careers in marine sciences.”
The program operates through partnerships with UVM Extension, a subsection of UVM that provides and facilitates research to partners across the state.
Eaton had been exploring ways to bring collegiate research opportunities to high school students. She brought the idea to Jason Stockwell, director of UVM’s Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory, who was developing the rotifer project.
Together, they built “Team ROTifer” with funding from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, Lake Champlain Sea Grant and UVM Extension.
For 17-year-old Lucy Lawson, who will enter her senior year at Mount Abraham Union High School this fall, the opportunity to work on the boat came about almost by accident.
She originally signed up for a UVM Introduction to Research Vessel Operations course. When the class was canceled, she reached out to Eaton. That email, coupled with glowing recommendations, secured her a place on the research team, she said.
“I’ve always loved the ocean,” Lucy said. “My parents are both really science-y, and in the last couple of years I’ve really started loving it.”
Essex student Alex McClary, 17, who plans to pursue biology in college, learned about the opportunity through an internship at the ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain.
Both students said the experience has reinforced their desire to pursue careers in science.
“There’s a huge difference between learning this stuff in the classroom and going out there and actually doing it,” Lucy said. “Seeing how everybody works together and what it looks like to do good science has been really cool.”
On the team’s first boat day in early June, the group gathered for a huddle before loading equipment onto the boat. Their task that day was to collect water from a portion of the 10 sampling sites spread across Lake Champlain.
At each stop, researchers deployed a rosette sampler — a large instrument equipped with 23 bottles that collect water from different depths — as well as plankton nets designed to capture organisms.
The rosette sampler can weigh over 1,000 pounds when full with water. To assure that data is collected safely and accurately, it is an all hands on deck operation. The students monitor the vessel’s winch and communicate with the team as the machine is lowered into the water.
Once the team gathered water from all of their sites for the day, they ran the water through different sizes of mesh sieves to filter out any organisms.
The team then took their labeled bottles back to the lab, where aquatic research technician Hannah Nygaard later examined the samples under microscopes, counting and measuring rotifers from each site.
The students are involved in every step. According to Eaton, those aren’t symbolic jobs.
“The students are running alongside us,” she said. “We need their extra eyes to be watching the gear when it’s in the water and to follow protocol from our captain and crew when they need support on something.”
“These two students have stepped up and into these roles really confidently, and we see them as part of our team,” she continued.
Students are also helping researchers operate the rosette sampler, which, until Team ROTifer, hadn’t been used as the primary sampling instrument in any UVM project.
In the early weeks of the project, the team had to map out the hard hat zones around the boat, determine the timing of deployments, establish where each team member should stand, among other parts of the process.
Instead of stepping into a pre-prescribed system, the students got the opportunity to develop this process alongside the rest of the team.
“Even though I’m young, we’re all treated as equals, which is really nice,” Alex said.
Going forward, Eaton hopes to refine the program and open it up to other high school students in the coming years.
Future applicants will likely be selected based on their interest in freshwater science and openness to challenging fieldwork, as well as recommendations from teachers, coaches or other adults who know them well, she said.
For Eaton, the goal is not simply to give students another line on a college application. It’s to provide them a chance to experience what scientific work actually looks like — the early mornings, dangerous equipment, teamwork and unexpected problems that never appear in a textbook.