This past academic year two small groups of students began work with the GLOBE program with recording data about their chosen subtopics. Each group included one high school student and one undergraduate student participating in the Penn State EnvironMentors program. One group with Leo Wang and Asiedua Ohene Asante focused on biodiversity and carbon capture within tree species at the Penn State University Park Campus, while the other group with Aliya Karim and Fatima Nadeem focused on Soil Microbe Biodiversity at University Park. Students participated in the ABRCMS 2023 ePoster Spring Symposium for Emerging Scientists before talking through their posters at the Penn State EnvironMentors symposium. I am really proud of the work that the students did this year. Congratulations to the students on their hard work!

 

Hi all,

One of the cool aspects (okay I am partial) to the course is the use of mini projects to help explain environmental principles. To being the semester students started by growing their own plants. They received a pot, organic soil with organic amendments, and then requested seeds from the PS Schuylkill Seed Bank & Library. They have been tracking their results throughout the semester. Some of the students had some troubled growth as the cold snap took a toll on them – an unfortunate part of living in Pennsylvania in the fall is it can get cold very fast.

Another mini project we are examining is the “Organic Mushroom Grow Kit” from Back to the Roots. We have a Pink Oyster Mushroom kit that we are going to follow over the coming weeks. We are also following a scrap kit using the scraping from the original kit on recovered coffee grounds in a plastic bag and reused cookie box. (Let’s not talk about where all the cookies and coffee went – they were materials accessible at home.) Here’s a picture of the starting materials. We’ll post an update as we go.

original kit                                  Kit from Coffee Grounds and Scrapings

Look at the World around You and Embrace.

This is the official launch of the web page for Penn State Schuylkill’s GLOBE program. We are really excited to be a GLOBE member school. For more information about our involvement in the program, check out our home page and the GLOBE program site.