by Longmei Ge
This summer, thanks to the support of the Garwin Family Foundation, I was able to attend a STEM II program for two weeks at Brown University. I participated in the class: “Marine Ecosystems in the Balance: Protecting a Changing Estuary”. My course focused on methods of conservation and restoration of the nearby estuary, Narragansett Bay.
Class Time!
My classes were held off campus, so every weekday at 8:30 a.m., my class was bussed to the Save the Bay center in Providence. In class, we learned about invasive species, ocean acidification and marine conservancy. Each Wednesday and Friday we had an “extended class”, so instead of classes ending at 11:15 a.m., they went until 3 p.m. During those longer classes, we went out onto the boats, trawling for aquatic life, or testing for water quality at different parts of the bay. My teacher, Ms. Jen Kelly, her aides, and our boat captain Chris, were kind and easy to communicate with over the course of my two-week stay at Brown.
Because we were so close to the water, we spent a lot of time doing hands-on activities at the bay, which I really liked. On our second day of class, we learned about invasive species and collected some specimens from the docks before cataloguing them in our binders. We found invasive sea squirts, barnacles and Asian shore crabs on the crab traps and buoys hanging off it.
That Thursday, we dissected a squid, which was so interesting. I learned that the squid only has three hard parts in its body; the pen, the lens and the beak, and that they have a siphon that helps them move by way of jet propulsion. I’ve never actually done that detailed of a dissection before, and I really enjoyed it (in a non-creepy way).
During our first extended class on Wednesday, we went on the boat and examined plankton on the surface of Narragansett Bay in four different locations. It never really registered how unbelievably difficult it was to look through a microscope and draw what you see on a moving boat. That day, we also tested water quality at those locations, which includes clarity, oxygen levels, and salinity with a guest speaker. We performed our first trawl, which is a method of collecting marine organisms by trailing a cone shaped net in the water behind a boat.
Another extended class day we spent traipsing on Quonochontaug beach, catching fish and shrimp with seine nets, and during a stop at Prudence Island and I picked up a horseshoe crab. A horseshoe crab!
Our final project saw us work in pairs to create a grant proposal for an environmental restoration project. My partner and I created a proposal to remove invasive goldfish from the Chaska lake system in southern Minnesota. I really enjoyed our final project prompt because I gained experience in group work, time management (we didn’t have any time in class to work on our projects), and creating and presenting proposals, all while learning about a topic I’m interested in.
Outside of Class
Outside of class, Brown made sure we were always having fun and hanging out with our classmates. Every evening they arranged “fundatory” events; events that were both “fun” and “mandatory”. Kind of an oxymoron if you think about it, but I really liked them. We watched movies, went to escape rooms, and went rock climbing (I managed to do one wall- I was so proud of myself).
On our first Friday, we had a silent disco, which was a lot of fun. The idea behind it is that if everyone listens to music through headphones, everyone will dance around (silently) and it’ll be super weird. But almost everyone sang along to some of the songs the DJ played over our headphones; songs like “Old Town Road” and “Take On Me”. Every once in a while, I would take my headphones off and watch everyone belting out lyrics without any actual music (because it was playing over headphones). When some less well-known songs would play, people would try to sing along, but it mostly sounded like “da da, DA DA wooaa” without music. Like when Miles Morales would try to sing along to Sunflower in Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse (one of the movies we watched).
Over the weekend we went to Easton’s beach and Newport, and I got wander around with my friends, getting ice cream, and laughing at their overwhelming fear of seabirds. And the next day, I was included in a small group of that was randomly chosen to go to a high-ropes obstacle course instead of going to a Revolution soccer game. I really enjoyed it, though I struggled in some places- mainly the ziplines (who knew you could bounce off a landing platform?)
At Brown we celebrated 4th of July a day early by watching a PawSox game (the minor league version of the Red Sox, basically) and the aftergame fireworks. I learned about baseball from one of the friends I sat with, and we wandered around the stadium for a lot of the actual game. Unfortunately, the PawSox lost, and I bought a lightsaber (the things people spend their money on these days).
For our actual 4th of July celebration, everybody went to Mystic, Connecticut to wander around the small shopping center, and go to the Mystic Aquarium. There we saw seal shows and penguins and jellyfish. I’m really into jellyfish now. Weird.
Other than the fundatory events, we had at least two hours of free time every day (it felt like less, though). That time was used to work or wander up and down Thayer Street, the main street next to the dorms filled with restaurants and little shops. My friends and I would try different restaurants when we didn’t feel like cafeteria food. We all went to an Indian restaurant one night, and all stressed about how to split our cash. When we left, it was storming, and nobody had an umbrella. We all had to race back to our dorms, too, so we weren’t late for our fundatory buses. Because the fundatory events started at 7, if we wanted to eat at a relaxed pace we had to start eating early. Don’t diss people eating dinner at 4:30 pm. They have their reasons.
Final Thought
Brown’s STEM II program, was a wonderful experience that allowed me to expand my horizons, academically and socially. Over the course of two weeks, my teachers cemented an interest in marine ecology in me, and my awesome new friends made my time at Brown beyond fantastic.
Before attending Brown, I was already into environmental science, but never really considered it as a particularly viable career option. After attending this STEM II course I’m now adding marine ecology to my list of future topics to study, and maybe even a subject I’d like to pursue in college.
Now, I would like to express my gratitude to the Garwin Family Foundation for giving me the opportunity to attend such an amazing program. It is because of the GFF that I’ve been able to experience campus life, learn more about our oceans, and make friends that I hope to keep in contact with as I grow older.