IUPUI students help to meet CEES mission

Here at CEES, we are lucky to have great IUPUI undergraduate and graduate students that assist us in carrying out our mission.  This past Spring Semester, we had 19 driven students!  Here is a short summary of their efforts and some links to their work.

DSE Education Outreach Interns
Our team of education interns delivered STEM and environmental education programs to over 1500 students from high-needs communities this past year in almost 300 hours of programming.  Our interns come from three departments in the School of Science as well as the School of Engineering and the School of Education. Thanks to Dr. Brian Plankis (Assistant Professor, School of Education) for helping with research and supervision associated with this programming and Elizabeth Johnson (CEES Education Specialist and Coordinator) for her leadership of the program and mentoring this talented group of students.

Service Learning Assistants
Our undergraduate service learning program had the support of two interns, Lauren Sercer and Keri Ward, funded by the Center for the Service and Learning (thank you CSL!) and three additional students gaining credit in service learning and community engagement for 40 hours of commitment each.

These five students helped to successfully coordinate and deliver nine events with four community partners and 172 students.  In addition: Lauren Sercer took on a leadership role in coordinating our first ever campus service learning event for high school students; student scholar Allison Rader (Check out her facebook post) had a special project talking to high school students about environmental service learning at IUPIUI; and, student scholar Kaylee Moore conducted a transportation survey aimed at increasing students’ choice of environmental friendly transportation alternatives.

Research Interns
CEES and the DSE program also benefitted from the help of graduate and undergraduate research interns and associates this semester. Here is a brief list of their work and some of their posts:

• Jenna Gatkze (IUB Graduate student, Education) – Researching Kenya-US DSE program [link]
• Sarah Goss (IUPUI Graduate student, Applied Earth Science) – CEES Service Learning Assessment and Researcher [link]
• Gracesen Brewster – Lilly ARBOR project [link]
• Kira Wiseman – “Multi-year dataset algal blooms and related environmental data for state of Indiana”
• Katelyn Kelso – “Comparison of state dam inventories for improved data assimilation (in collaboration with the SilverJackets Low Head Dam Committee)
• Mike McCormick – “Erosion Prevention and Habitat Restoration” (In close collaboration with Don Miller, IndyParks… Thank you, Don and Brenda!)