News

Six RACC high school teams from Vermont and Puerto Rico initiated a high school science and cultural exchange program during the spring of 2016. RACC high school teams met last summer at the 2015 Streams Project high school training week at Saint Michael's College, which is geared towards promoting scientific research focused on adaptation to climate change in both regions. The exchange started with a trip to Vermont in March for four teachers and ten students from Jose E Aponte de la Torre High School, Juan Ponce de Leon High School, Aurea E Quiles High School, and Academia Maria Reina. Then, students from Vermont schools Hartford High School and Bellows Free Adademy-Fairfax traveled to Puerto Rico during the April school break.

While in Vermont, students visited Hartford High School where they learned data collection methods to measure carbon in plants and to determine how soils absorb water and nutrient runoff with Curriculum Developer Didi Pershouse. Students were welcomed by the Spanish class where they shared typical cuisines from Vermont and Puerto Rico, while practicing speaking in Spanish. Students visited a nearby sugar shack as well as Dartmouth College to tour the campus and visit the life sciences building. Dartmouth graduate students spoke about their research on soil carbon cycling and evolutionary ecology.

Students then traveled to Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax to participate in homestays with local families. While in Fairfax, students attended a Spanish class, a social studies class, and learned how to construct Global Decomposition Bags for deployment in Puerto Rico. Students also visited the Proctor Maple Research Center and the Green Mountain Dairy Farm to tour a working dairy farm and biodigester.

A couple weeks later, Vermont students and teachers traveled to Puerto Rico during their spring break. Students visited the Children's Museum in Carolina and toured by boat the Pinones Lagoon and mangrove channels. Students experimented with a typical Puerto Rican lunch, followed by a tour of Old San Juan. They visited the afterschool program at Jose E Aponte de la Torre High School for chemistry, physics, research methods, and botany classes.

The trip to the El Verde Field Station, which is managed by the Luquillo Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, started with a talk by Dr. Jess Zimmerman and Sarah Stankavich. Students learned field protocols for soil characterization, vegetation dynamics research, and data entry. That afternoon, the teams kayaked at the bioluminescent bay in Las Croabas. Students visited nesting sea turtles at the Northeast Ecological Corridor (NEC), in Luquillo and learned Bomba y Plena dances before having free time to explore the beach.

Teams visited the LTER Schoolyard parcel in the Guanica Dry Forest Reserve which included a hike to Fort Capron Ruins and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Site and board walk. The final day in Puerto Rico included a tour of the Arecibo Observatory and the Juan Ponce de Leon High School in Florida. While at the school, students learned about vegetation protocols and parcel delineation before collecting data in the school forest.

Both students and teachers benefited from these cultural and scientific exchanges. A second exchange program will be planned for the subsequent school year, and will involve more high schools from Vermont and Puerto Rico.

Congratulations to Dr. Peter D.F. Isles for the successful defense of his dissertation! The committee felt that he did an outstanding job in both his oral and written components. Peter will be a great asset to the team that he is joining in Sweden for his post doc, as well as whatever lucky university eventually lands him as an assistant professor. He will be leaving UVM after he ties together some of the manuscripts associated with his thesis, so be sure to congratulate him when you see him.

The annual LaunchVT business pitch competition was held on May 5th, 2016 at Main Street Landing in Burlington Vermont. The winner, Ogee, a skin care products company received $30,000 in cash and more than $45,000 of in-kind support.

LaunchVT's partnership with Vermont EPSCoR enabled them to offer a 2nd place prize of $15,000 in cash and $25,000 worth of in-kind support. This year's VT EPSCoR Innovation Cash Prize was presented by RACC member Donna Rizzo and was presented to Wheel Pad founder Julie Lineberger. Wheel Pad's goal is to build a socially-conscious, environmentally-friendly company that provides transitional housing for people newly using wheelchairs in a respectful and supportive manner.

The RACC High School Team from Harwood Union High School was awarded Honorable Mention for the Vermont Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence for their project titled "Baseline Stream Flow and Temperature Data for Lozelle and Dowsville Brooks and Proposed Stormwater Improvements for Harwood Union High School". Students Sydney Adams and Kyle Dash worked with their teacher Jeff Robins during the 2015-2016 academic year on RACC research and presented their project poster at the VT EPSCOR Student Research Symposium on March 29, 2016.

An awards ceremony was held on April 28, 2016 at the Vermont State House Cedar Creek Room where the students' work was celebrated with Deborah Markowitz, the Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

Jakob O'Neal, a 2015 summer research intern, presented his RACC research poster, titled "Potential Correlations Between Water Quality, Habitat Quality, and Macroinvertebrate Taxa", at the Landmark College Natural Science Poster Fair on April 30, 2016 in the MacFarlane Center in Putney, VT. Jakob is a sophomore at Landmark College and worked in Dr. Declan McCabe's macroinvertebrate lab at Saint Michael's College during the summer 2015 season. He plans to finish his Associates degree at Landmark College this spring and will enroll in a Bachelor's degree program starting in the fall 2016. Great work, Jakob!

Dr. Arne Bomblies has been awarded tenure at the University of Vermont. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering. Dr. Bomblies is the team leader of the VT EPSCoR RACC Watershed Processes (Q2) team. Formerly from Castle Rock, Colorado, he joined the CEMS' School of Engineering in January 2009. Congratulations Arne!

Vermont EPSCoR held a Mentoring & Teaching of Diversity workshop at the UVM Davis center on Saturday April 30th, 2016. The goals of the workshop were to enrich knowledge about diversity and cultural identities and their impacts. Strategies and approaches for developing a more just & inclusive environment were also reviewed.

Presenters:
Sherwood Smith, Senior Executive Director, Diversity, Engagement & Professional Development

Joel Shapiro, Director, Professional Development & Training

Briana Martin, TRIO/SSS Coordinator and Access and Success Coordinator for the Office of Diversity & Inclusion

Photos from the Vermont EPSCoR photo archive.

A $20 million award from the National Science Foundation to Vermont EPSCoR will help answer that question, providing much needed information to decision-makers as they govern the basin and develop policies that reach far into the future.

The award, one of the largest in Vermont history, was announced by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan at press conference at the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain on April 18.

The five-year project will support research teams from UVM and colleges across the state that will collect data from sensors in streams, soil, and the lake and gather information on adjacent land use - by farms or developers, for instance.

The CWDD was excited to showcase the innovative discoveries of over 54 posters and 8 oral presentations from student researchers through the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change (RACC) program at the 8th annual Student Research Symposium on Tuesday March 29th, 2016. Over 170 people attended. This symposium brings everyone together who has worked for the past year on countless aspects of research. During the half-day symposium, networking opportunities are enabled for undergraduates, high school students, scientists, managers, government officials, and other interested state and local groups. RACC research provides valuable insights on the Lake Champlain Basin for many stakeholders throughout Vermont. The many contributions from this year's young scientists will help improve our understanding even more! Thank you to all for your effort and dedication.

Vermont EPSCoR's Winter 2016 Magazine

On March 21st 2016, Nasser Abdel-Fatah (2014 RACC intern) presented a poster at the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America in Albany, New York. RACC Member and mentor, Dr. Tania Bacchus, Professor of Environmental Science Department of Environmental and Health Sciences, Johnson State College attended as did former RACC high school student, Shelby Rosten.

On March 28th 2016, Andrew Schroth presented an overview of both RACC and NEWRnet research in the Missisquoi Basin to the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain executive board at their monthly meeting, which was followed by a lively question and answer session. Progress was made towards establishing a partnership between EPSCoR researchers and the citizen stakeholder group based on our mutual interest in promoting improved water quality in the Missisquoi Basin. Schroth will meet with the group again at their annual meeting in May.

Less than a decade ago, Rachel Sanders was exploring what makes life in the oceans tick and Laszlo Bardos was looking for engineering solutions to improve computer software.

And while they are both still eager to teach their subjects, this year the are pursuing a different agenda: influencing the way their colleagues in the Rivendell Interstate School District are teaching those and other topics. Armed with a $100,000 grant, they will spend the 2016-2017 school year coaching other teachers in ways to help their students learn by, among other things, teaching their teachers.

On March 5th 2016 Melissa Segall (2015 RACC intern) and Nasser Abdel-Fatah (2014 RACC intern) presented posters at the 41st Annual Northeastern Storm Conference in Saratoga Springs, New York. This conference is organized by the students in the Meteorology program at Lyndon State College (now in its 41st year). Melissa Segall is one of the board members that helped to organize this years' meeting. Dr. Tania Bacchus, Professor Environmental & Health Sciences at Johnson State College, worked with the students on the research.

On Tuesday, March 8, 2016, BFA-Fairfax Middle School 7th grade students took a close look at their campus landscape including the Mill Brook which happens to run right on the school grounds! Mr. Chris Palmer, a 7th and 8th grade science teacher, has incorporated Mill Brook in the science curriculum unit on water quality, blue-green algae blooms, and how these issues relate to the students. The study site, Mill Brook, flows directly into the Lamoille River which empties into Lake Champlain. Laura Yayac, Janel Roberge, and Lindsay Wieland from the Center for Workforce Development and Diversity at Saint Michael's College (CWDD) visited the classroom and highlighted for the students, the connection between the health of their local stream and algal blooms that occur downstream.

Students were introduced to simple scientific research methods and discussed how their actions can help impact regional environmental issues. For example, at the stream, students divided into two groups to learn how researchers collect stream data and make observations. The students measured several parameters with pH probes, took temperature readings. Students also took grab samples from the stream to analyze in the lab. Lab tests included measures of phosphates, nitrates, chlorine, and dissolved oxygen - which are measures that enable scientists to understand the health of the stream and the watershed.

When asked about the value of this type of outreach event, Mr. Palmer answered, "My students getting experience doing research with real scientists outside the confines of my classroom laboratory - big time authenticity!"

Method Developed To Predict Local Climate Change
reportingclimatescience.com
... of High-Resolution Climate Simulations over the Mountainous Northeastern United States by Jonathan M. Winter, Brian Beckage, Gabriela Bucini, Radley M. Horton and Patrick J. Clemins published in Journal of Hydrometeorology, doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-15- ...

Champlain College team wins LaunchVT Collegiate Competition
Vermont Biz
LaunchVT is Vermont's statewide business competition and is made possible thanks to our sponsors, including: the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, Vermont Department of Economic Development, Vermont EPSCoR, Free Press Media, ...

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science is pleased to announce that the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program is now accepting applications for the 2016 Solicitation 1. Applications are due 5:00pm ET on Wednesday May 11, 2016.

LaunchVT applications open; announces new collegiate program
vtdigger.org
LaunchVT is made possible thanks to our sponsors, including: the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, Vermont Department of Economic Development, Vermont EPSCoR, Free Press Media, People's United Bank, New England Federal Credit ...