Creek Connections offers opportunities for schools to conduct basic water quality monitoring, design water-related research projects, and attend an annual Student Research Symposium. By practicing real science using a natural resource located in their own backyards, students strengthen quantitative skills and understand the connection and impacts that they have to their waterways.
This hands-on field study encourages students to share their knowledge, research, and concerns with others in the watershed community. The result of this water science education is a productive collaboration between students and faculty at regional schools and Catamount Institute, Allegheny College, UCCS, and Colorado College, leading to a new focus on science literacy, environmental stewardship, and research for students at all levels.
There are four primary components to the Creek Connections school year:
- Creek Connections school year begins in July at the Summer Institute, where teams of teachers and students visit Creek Connections for the one-day workshop. Equipment and background resources are supplied, and the methodology for water chemistry tests, biological sampling, and habitat assessment are reviewed.
- Every few weeks during the school year, students participating in Creek Connections visit their field site at their local waterway. Each class is provided with equipment to conduct basic water quality tests in the field and the lab. Water samples are taken at midstream and then analyzed to quantify 8 key water quality parameters: temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, total dissolved solids, phosphorus, nitrogen, turbidity and alkalinity. All data is entered on the Creek Connections website and is accessible for students and the public to conduct seasonal and geographic trend analysis and to do site comparisons.
- In addition to testing the above parameters, each school designs and conducts independent projects relating to water quality, watersheds, stream ecology, or water issues (eg. coliform testing, comparison of different streams, benthic sampling, fish sampling, comparison of groundwater with stream water, history of waterway).
- The culminating event of the year is the annual Student Research Symposium in April where all participating schools and students convene at Colorado College to share their research findings. Students present and display their water data and independent research projects at this collaborative setting, which allows them meet the other schools, compare data and research projects, and witness the diversity of work that has been done in their watershed.
To assist area teachers with bringing watershed education successfully into the classroom, Catamount Institute provides numerous resources to participating teachers. Catamount staff and work-study students act as liaisons to schools to assist teachers with the ongoing water quality monitoring, data analysis, macroinvertebrate sampling, independent research project procedures, Student Research Symposium preparation, and classroom presentations.
Catamount Institute is proud to be offering Creek Connections at the following schools during the 2008-2009 academic year:
Galileo Middle School
Saint Mary's High School
Palmer Ridge High School
Eagle Side Elementary
Manitou Spring Elementary School
For more information contact Laura Tuel at
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visit http://creekconnections.allegheny.edu
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