Catherine Twyman: New River Community College - Intro to Engineering course - new design project centered around stream water quality monitoring. Collaborating with the NRCC Engineering Department Head, Bill Noble, to pilot the new project in Fall 2019.
Shaunna Young: William Fleming High School - Environmental Science - new course designed to help students better understand human impact on the environment
Washington County Schools District-Wide Project Based Learning (PBL) initiative was piloted by 2 RET’s using the module developed during RET (Steve)
Field trip with 25 high school students to Natural Bridge and Natural Bridge Caverns - water quality measurements taken in the cave and in the karst waters of the area (Steve)
Field trips with 85 high school students to VT to repeat most of the field trips introduced in the RET program: Drone lab, Helmet lab, Blacksburg Wastewater treatment plant, Household water quality, Hillsville Drinking Water Treatment Plant (Rachelle and Steve)
Student expeditionary field trip: cave for Nitrates with 4 students. This involved an 80 foot rappel and equipment purchased through an RET grant (Steve)
Katie Holcomb: Patrick Henry High School - developed interactive lessons based on research experience at VT. Planning collaboration with Virginia Western to tour the new STEM lab
High school field trip to VT to experience the Visionarium as well as Blacksburg middle school's Virtual Reality Lab to research implementing a VR lab at a RET school. (Steve)
“Hydrology of Beaver dam Creek” 3 day Intersession Module with 20 students at Carroll County High School (Rachelle)
Stream Surveys. Collaborated with 6 Biology II classes (~25 students each) at Carroll County High School (Rachelle)
Collaboration between the Biotechnology and Computer Science class building a temperature sensor with Raspberry Pi at Carroll County High School (Rachelle)
Collaboration between the Biotechnology and Earth Science classes at Carroll County High School to deliver a well water experience through field trips and well water testing with the Virginia Household Water Quality Program (Rachelle)
Publications
Dawn Hakkenberg - publishing an article in a journal: Virginia Mathematics Teacher (full citation to be provided)
News Stories
Article about CCHS’s intersession program with the learning module “Hydrology of Beaver Dam Creek” highlighted in the article. “From Karate to Rocket Science CCHS Students Get a Kick Out of Intersession Week,” Galax Gazette, March 2018 (Rachelle)
Grants
RET scholar (Steve Ahn) awarded a $5000 Chesapeake Bay Conservancy grant to acquire a needed spectrophotometer for high school. The grant included funds for two field trips to Virginia Tech for students to repeat many field trips taken by RET’s in the summer. The spectrophotometer is being used in a current RET project this summer. (Steve)
RET awarded a $2000 VA Wildlife DGIF grant for wetsuits and snorkels for aquatic wildlife observation. (Aaron and Steve)
RET awarded a $500 AEP Teacher Vision Grant for caving headlamps - directly written to facilitate my lessons developed from RET project (Steve)
RET awarded a $1000 Celestron/Cornell Ornithology Binocular grant (Steve)
Conferences
Poster: “Water, Water, Everywhere.” Rachelle Rasco. The National Science Foundation Conference: “RET: Leveraging Our Collective Impact”. NC State. Raleigh NC October 21-23, 2018
Presentation: “What’s in Your Water? Experiential Education and Well Water Testing for High School Students and Their Families.” Erin Ling. Rachelle Rasco. Water Conference. Virginia Lakes and Watershed Association. Midlothian, VA. March 2019.
Virginia Household Water Quality Program, Virginia Cooperative Extension. Virginia Tech. Partnership with Erin Ling (Household water quality) of VT where over 200 students from 3 RET high schools sampled their drinking water wells and brought them to VT for analysis. 12 students diagnosed serious drinking water issues from their sample. (Rachelle, Steve, Aaron)
Partnered with Laura Lehmann of VT STREAM Lab who helped an RET acquire equipment to do a stream profile with high school students (Steve)
Partnered with RET lab manager, Lucas Waller, to bring RET high school's chemical hygiene plan into compliance (Steve)
Professional Development with Other Teachers
Presentation: “RET program and the LEWAS Lab.” CCHS Opening Day for Teachers. Carroll County High School. Hillsville, VA. August 2017. (Rachelle)