We’ve mentioned the impacts of COVID-19 on our field trips, but the overall purpose of this project–determining the impact of plastic pollution on coastal microbes–is more urgent than ever. As reported by Scientific American, increased use of personal protective equipment and other single-use plastic products, such as takeout containers, has drastically increased the amount of plastic debris entering our oceans. What impact will this surge in plastic debris have? We’ll continue to collect data to try to find out!
When we bring our students to the field trip they ALWAYS ask about recycling and ways to prevent ocean plastic pollution. One of the beauties of our project is that it touches everybody, not only science majors. Because, of course, plastic pollution of the ocean affects everybody. We always have great discussions about global solutions, economic factors and the need for a circular economy, how to involve the public, and what can we do as private citizens. The above documentary goes into the history and the depths of the recycling industry. It is long but worth to watch. And it shows how much more we need to do…
Bummer…we lost your contact info! Image by Fran__ from Pixabay
Technology is our friend until it is not…We received notifications of contact forms submitted, but turns out we had to upgrade the form program in order to see the entries. And when it was upgraded, it erased the existing entries. Argh!
So please, if you filled out the contact form before, could you do it again? We would love to connect with like minded people and start planning new collaborations.
Well, EB2020 (ASBMB 2020) did not happen in sunny San Diego as planned due to Covid-19. I was looking forward the conference both for myself, my students (one of them was going to the student poster competition), and my wonderful ASBMB Science Outreach Committee people and all the planned activities. But as many other conferences, this was also cancelled.
Luckily, there were options for e-poster upload and also virtual presentation. So below are links for both. I took the opportunity to run some analyses with the new survey data, and to update the demographics of the groups. The data presented are of those who completed the surveys (the population who participated in the CURE is over 100 now).
This is a quick update of where we are at now with the Covid pandemic. Needless to say, pretty much everything is on standby now. Conferences we planned for presenting data were canceled (was really looking forward EB2020 being in San Diego), DNA to be sequenced is sitting in the freezer, and with no access to labs even side experiments are stopped. Luckily we did not have any field trips planned until June. Logistically, with classes being run online now for the foreseeable future, we face challenges and opportunities. But basically, the only thing we can do now is literature review and data analysis. We are planning on still presenting the EB posters virtually and will announce when it happens.
Our Scripps collaborator Jeff Bowman is still out in the Arctic ocean, as the MOSAIC expedition and many others have suffered from logistical challenges as transport routes have been limited. The good news is that both the NU and the SIO personnel seem to be in good shape and mostly working from home. If you want to learn more about the Arctic, by the way, there is a course in Coursera that can be taken for free!
Needless to say, there is a lot going on at the global and national scale, with terrifying human and economical implications. There is a lot going on in the field of education of course- pivoting to online communications for teaching has been a challenging process for many. But who knows what will emerge on the other side. We are also facing challenges to the original design of the project in the grant and trying to think outside the box to carry forward.
An interesting aspect has been the issue of plastic use in the pandemic. With concerns of buying food and more reliance on food delivery, policies regarding reusable bags are being rolled back, and there is a clear increase of use in plastic containers to deliver food. Lively discussions ensue on different forums about how to balance safety with the desire to decrease the use of plastics in the world. And recycling, sadly, seems not to be the solution any time soon.
So, we hope to be back soon. In the meantime, stay safe. Stay healthy. Good health. Take care.
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As we enter the second year of our NSF grant, new opportunities and challenges are coming our way. With the logistics of regular SIO field trips and student assessments established, the focus is now on both deepening the science and disseminating the CURE model. With the latter, we have been juggling multiple hats from getting our new website up and running (thank you Rachel) to making our educational modules more organized. Last weekend’s SABER West provided lots of feedback and ideas regarding the expansion of the CURE to other classes, as well as strengthening relationships with local institutions.
At National University we have been lucky for several years now to have mini-grants for both faculty and students to do small undergraduate research projects. Three of the latest round of applicants came from the November field trip! Which, while “anecdotal data,” still shows how the experience of research applied to relevant issues can attract students to STEM.
Heading up!
Next field trip will be Saturday, February 22, 2020. Educators who are curious about this project feel free to contact us and participate!
It’s hard to believe January is well over half gone! Ana and I have been quite busy going to workshops and conferences to share our news and experiences. I attended a grantsmanship workshop January 9-10 hosted by the NSF STEM Hub at Miramar College in San Diego, where I had the privilege to share our experiences in grant writing and share our vision of CURE collaborations with regional Hispanic-serving institutions.
Next, on January 17-19 we attended the annual regional conference for the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research, SABER West. A lot of regional HSIs were there and we got to share our latest project results. We’re hoping to see a lot of prospective partners on our next field trip on February 22!
Ana and I are “dividing and conquering” in terms of sharing results. I am at the American Society for Microbiology’s annual meeting presenting our preliminary results on student outcomes while Ana is at a Gordon Research Conference doing the same.
Some cool findings:
Our demographics are even more diverse than anticipated!
We also asked students a number of retrospective survey questions about their knowledge of lab procedures and ocean plastic research as well as their appreciation of science. Results showed statistically significantly differences in all questions indicating improvements across all assessed areas.
As Rachel announced in a previous note, we are collaborating with Jeff Bowman from SIO in the deployment, collection, and analysis of samples, as well as in the educational experience.
The gist of the NSF grant is to develop a CURE (course based undergraduate research experience) to involve students in research early on (we are targeting low division courses and even non majors). CUREs have been shown to be very useful in increasing indicators of student success (engagement, retention etc) in STEM, and this is particularly important for underrepresented minorities.
So we are attaching our samples these days to the Scripps pier, which involves divers but not boats, and so far no lost samples (which is nice- we were really bummed when the buoy disappeared just before day 60 the last time). In June we did a pilot with a BIO100A (this is the nonmajors general biology lab class) and students were positive about the visit. We are now in the middle of planning the “real thing,” meaning not only the sample collection and processing by the class, but also a presentation of SIO activities and Q&Q with the scientists, including Jeff’s grad students.
The amount of moving pieces to coordinate is a bit overwhelming, especially with our short courses, but things are moving along. We are also getting student researchers involved. In the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed for no high surf on November 3rd, which is the day of the field trip. While we have extra samples incubated in the SIO lab thanks to Emelia, but it is not the same as getting the samples out of the water after more than one month (we deployed late September). Stay tuned!
The latest deployment sitting on a pylon of the SIO pier.
We found out today that we received a $249,978 NSF grant for the submission: Using Ocean Plastic Research to Increase Student Engagement and Persistence in Biology. Needless to say, we are absolutely ecstatic. Here is the announcement: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832545
and here is a nice blog posting by Jeff Bowman at Scripps Oceanography describing our pilot last June:
