Hello, and welcome to the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center's first newsletter dedicated solely to our education programs! Firstly, let me give a brief introduction to the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) for those who may be unfamiliar with our organization. NGRREC is a unique division of the Lewis and Clark Community College (L&C) with a research field station located at the confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers in East Alton, IL. We are a collaborative partnership between L&C, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) of the Prairie Research Institute at UIUC. As our name implies, we focus on both the research and the education necessary for the health of our large rivers. Researchers here study the ecology of big rivers, the workings of the watersheds that feed them, and the ties to the river communities that use them. From an education standpoint, we work to develop and implement education and outreach programs that foster a greater understanding and appreciation for the great rivers, as well as extend and apply knowledge gained from the research to protect and sustain the quality of river environments. If you would like to learn more about our organization, visit our website! Secondly, let me introduce myself and tell you a little about what to expect from these newsletters. My name is Allison Rhanor, and I am the Environmental Educator for NGRREC. I will be putting together an education newsletter on a quarterly basis (think seasonally), and in these newsletters, you will be able to see what our Team has been up to, as well as learn about any upcoming events in which we will be involved. In the side bar, you will find sections that will be recurring in each newsletter such as the People Served section, which will display the number of people we have reached with our education programs throughout the quarter, as well as the Who's Who? section, where you can find a quick list of NGRREC employees that are mentioned in the newsletter. If you have any questions or comments regarding this newsletter, please do not hesitate to reply! All replies to this newsletter will come straight to me. Also, please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you feel may be interested in our programs! And lastly, now that we've gotten through the introductions, keep reading to see what our Team has been doing this fall!
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 October
O.A.R. Northwest NGRREC was lucky enough to meet and collaborate with the rowing team from O.A.R. Northwest. These guys have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and have circumnavigated both the Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula! This year, the team embarked on Adventure: Mississippi River 2014, the first in what will now be an annual rowing trip down the entire length of the Mississippi River. As they rowed down the river collecting water quality data, they stopped at schools along the way to talk to kids about their mission and help connect them with their local environment. In September, the team began rowing from the river's source in Lake Itasca, Minnestota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico . By October 21st, they had arrived as far as the NGRREC field station in East Alton, IL. Standing on the shore of the Mississippi River outside our field station as I waited to flag down a couple of rowboats was quite the unique experience! Here, they spent a couple of days connecting with students from Alton High School and Principia Elementary School in St. Louis, MO, as well as collecting data from the Illinois-Mississippi River and Missouri-Mississippi River confluences. By the end of November, they had made it to the Gulf! Visit their website and check out some of their other adventures, or contact the team if you're an educator and would like next year's all female rowing team to visit your class! If your school isn't near the Mississippi River, your class can still follow along at rowboatclassroom.org, where the team will update a map with the locations that they took their water samples, pictures, and blogs as they make their way down river. On this site, you can also access their free Adventure: Mississippi River curriculum! |
November
Science in the South
The Department of Continuing Education and Outreach at Southern Illinois University Carbondale hosted its 19th annual Science in the South Conference on November 7th. This conference targets K-12 Illinois science teachers and provides tools for supplementing classroom learning with hands-on activities. I presented a Project WET sampler workshop, and my colleague, Matt Young, the RiverWatch Coordinator here at NGRREC, presented a sampler workshop for NGRREC's Stream Discovery program. Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) is a program that provides water-related curricula to educators around the world, and NGRREC is the Illinois host for this program. To learn more about Project WET, check out their resources at projectwet.org. Stream Discovery is a program led by Matt Young that provides students in grades 5-12 across the state with the unique hands-on opportunity to learn about water quality by monitoring a local stream. Educators take a 5 hour workshop to familiarize themselves with the physical, chemical, and biological monitoring procedures, and then take their students out to learn about water quality while collecting real data! You can check out the Stream Discovery page on our website to learn more. SIUC is both Matt's and my alma mater, so it was an honor to return and contribute to furthering the education of others!
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| On November 14th and 15th, NGRREC hosted the Mississippi River Watershed Education Symposium, the eighth in a series of NGRREC conferences and symposia, and the first with an education focus. Our mission with this symposium was to provide educators, both formal and non-formal, as well as other watershed professionals with an opportunity to stay current on watershed issues and to develop partnerships on unique, science-based watershed education programs.
Included in this symposium were concurrent sessions, workshops, and field trips, as well as a student poster session. Highlights of the symposium included keynote presentations from Sean O'Connor, manager of the educational mapping program at National Geographic and Chad Pregracke, president and founder of Living Lands & Waters and recipient of CNN's 2013 Hero of the Year Award.
All the sessions were informative and inspiring, and the workshops and field trips offered a diversity of topics and activities to participants including professional development, area tours, and even a river cleanup! And both keynote presentations were amazing! To read more about our presenters and their talks, download the conference proceedings.
Over 100 people attended MRWES, contributing to discussions, collaborations, and the overall success of this symposium. I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors, speakers, planning committee, and all the participants for making this event possible. We couldn't have done it without you!
Sponsors of MRWES include the following:
         
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A Jam Packed Day!
November 20th was a very busy day for the Education Team!
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 - Who Works the River?In the morning, we had the pleasure of being a part of the Who Works the River? event put on by Riverworks Discovery. For two hours, students from Cleveland Academy, Granite City High School, McCluer South, and Civic Memorial rotated between stations at the NGRREC field station and the National Great Rivers Museum next door with our partners from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At these stations, students were able to learn about the many different careers associated with big rivers, including careers in research, education, and engineering. At the NGRREC field station, we had a rotation on aquatic ecology, led by Ed Culver and Ben Lubinski, both of whom are INHS biologists that work at NGRREC, as well as a rotation on terrestrial ecology led by Megan Cosgriff and Robin Ingersoll, two L&C biologists at NGRREC. Another rotation was led by Ted Kratschmer, the Field Station Manager and Science Liaison for NGRREC, and Sue Czerwinski, the Dean of Math and Science at L&C. They focused on the education necessary to enter an environmental science career as well as the transfer program available through L&C. Our final rotation was on radio telemetry and was led by our Environmental Education Manager, Natalie Marioni. Natalie introduced the students to the process of radio telemetry as well as the idea that it takes not only a biologist to use this tracking equipment, but also engineers to develop such equipment. |
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- Radio Telemetry with Principia High School
Later that afternoon, Natalie Marioni gave a more in-depth presentation on radio telemetry for a senior class from Principia High School. She discussed with them how radio telemetry works for tracking animals, and then conducted an activity using real-world data maps to explore the many things we can learn from tracking different species. Examples included the nesting behaviors of an endangered turtle species, the depth at which a fish swims during a certain time of day, and the importance of the temporal movement patterns of a female mountain lion. Then, she took the students outside where they used telemetry equipment for themselves to track Harold the Turtle, a stuffed animal that was hidden in the native prairie plants outside the field station!
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 - Science Fair at North ElementaryIn the evening, Matt and I ran an exhibit at the North Elementary School Science Fair in Godfrey, IL. In between presenting their science projects and receiving their awards, students and their families were able to check out science displays from different organizations. At our exhibit, we demonstrated our floodplain simulation model. This was so much fun! Using this model, kids were able to "make it rain" on a river and floodplain ecosystem and watch the effects of flooding given different scenarios. The students could place their houses at different elevations, make a river home on stilts (toothpicks), and build dams with clay! With this model, we were able to swap out floodplain wetlands (sponges) for a parking lot (Plexiglass) so that the students could see the difference in flooding severity with the same amount of rain on these different landscapes. This visualization goes a long way in explaining the effects of development, impervious pavements, and restoration efforts to children of all ages, and adults too! The kids had a blast, and Matt and I did as well! If you would like to read more about how this model works, check out Matt's explanation in his RiverWatch blog! |
December
C.A. Henning Elementary School
Last week, I was invited to C.A. Henning Elementary School in Troy, IL where I had the pleasure of teaching two 5th grade classes about water quality and stream monitoring. First, we discussed the definition of a watershed and the interconnectedness of streams by exploring their school's location within the Silver Creek, Kaskaskia River, and Mississippi River watersheds. This helped the students to understand why someone living in Louisiana should care if someone living in Kansas, for example, was polluting their local stream. We then talked about how scientists collect macroinvertebrates from streams, and why macroinvertebrate samples are often better indicators of stream health than water samples alone.
The students then had an opportunity to determine the water quality of their own pretend stream. They were broken up into groups, and each group was assigned a habitat type within the stream, such as leaf packs or woody debris. The groups then collected macroinvertebrate cards from their habitats and determined their Water Quality Index (WQI) based on the number of taxa they found and calculations from our Stream Discovery program. Because different groups had different WQIs based on the macroinvertebrates they found in their habitat, we discussed the importance of sampling multiple habitat types when trying to determine the WQI of a real stream. We wrapped up the activity by trying to identify real macroinvertebrate specimens. This was a great group that really immersed themselves in the activity and asked a lot of awesome questions, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to get these kids excited about stream monitoring!
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2015 Summer College Internship Program
Soon Accepting Student Applications!
Every year, NGRREC hosts a highly successful summer internship program for college sophomores, juniors, and seniors. This prestigious program is a paid internship opportunity, providing a $4,000 stipend over the course of the program, and gives students a chance to gain real experience in variety of environmental careers such as ecological research, fisheries science, education, policy, archaeology, and social science. At the conclusion of this nine week internship, students present their project results to their fellow interns, faculty advisors, and invited guests at a two-day Intern Symposium.
We recently received a diverse array of project proposals by faculty and agency advisors from organizations throughout the Mississippi River Watershed, each wishing to mentor a NGRREC college intern through their research experience. Soon, we will be accepting student applications to match qualified and motivated students with each of the projects selected.
To apply, students must complete an online application form, which should be available on the intern page at our website by mid-January. Here, you will also find the projects for which we will be selecting students. See below for other application specifics.
Deadline for Student Applications: February 16thRequired Materials: Must be submitted electronically along with the online application form by the Feb. 16th deadline.
1) Biographical sketch - Submit a brief statement (100 words or less) about
yourself, your interests, and where you see yourself career-wise in 5 years.
2) College transcript - Unofficial copy will suffice as long as your name is clearly
visible on the transcript.
3) Resume - Include all relevant coursework, previous internships and volunteer
positions. Organization name, location, and dates should be included.
Minimum Requirements:
1) GPA of 3.25 or higher
2) Required attendance at Orientation (May 26-29) and Intern Symposium
(Aug 3-4) if accepted as an intern.
This is a highly sought-after, paid position, so please forward this information on to any student you feel may benefit from such a great opportunity!
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EEAI Annual Conference
The Environmental Education Association of Illinois will be holding its 2015 conference at Touch of Nature Environmental Center in Makanda, IL on April 9th-11th. Proposals to present are being accepting through January 16th. Conference strands include Environmental Education in Practice, Environmental Literacy, Journey into EE, and Networking and Opportunities. Visit their website for more information, and check back as info regarding registration unfolds. We hope to see you there!
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Riverbend Earth Day Festival
The Nature Institute will be hosting the 4th annual Riverbend Earth Day celebration on Saturday April 18th, in partnership with the Great Rivers Land Trust, NGRREC, the Sierra Club, and the Alton Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau. This event will be held at the Piasa Harbor in Godfrey, IL, located on the Great River Road. Activities include organized hiking, paddling, local food and vendors, live music and more! It's free and open to the public, so come join the Riverbend community and check us out, as well as all the other exhibitors as we celebrate Earth Day! Riverbend Earth Day Festival
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Peoria Clean Water Celebration
The Clean Water Celebration, hosted by the Sun Foundation, will be held on April 19th and 20th in Peoria, IL and will be spread across three locations: the Peoria Riverfront, GAR Hall, and the Peoria Civic Center. This is a conference for middle and high school students, as well as the general public. The celebration encourages us to improve water quality, to think critically and creatively about adequate and safe water supplies, and to promote the wise use of natural resources. Check out their website for more information. Registration opens in February! Clean Water Celebration
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I hope you enjoyed our first Education Newsletter! Stay tuned for an introduction to the rest of the Education Team and to hear all about our winter activities in our next newsletter, coming in March! Have a great holiday season everyone, and drive safe if you're traveling. And stay warm! Sincerely,  Allison Rhanor Environmental Educator National Great Rivers Research and Education Center |
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