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Environmental Science Summer Research Experience for Young Women
Welcome to E.S.S.R.E.!
Launched in July of
2001, the Environmental Science Summer Research Experience
for Young Women is a three week
summer
internship in environmental field studies for 9th and 10th
grade girls from the greater Baltimore area. Participants explore the soil
chemistry and biota of the Roland Park Country School campus, author and test
lab activities for studying soil microenvironments, and adapt these labs for
dissemination and use in a wide variety of educational situations and
socio-economic conditions. The program's primary objectives are to give
this target audience the opportunity to engage in authentic, self-directed
primary research into the ecological roles of soil microbes and, as a result, to
nurture their interest in science in general as a possible career option.
Now in its 19th year,
E.S.S.R.E. has received national recognition for our efforts to promote
the study of soil ecology, including the 2006 SeaWorld/Busch Gardens/Fuji Film Environmental Excellence Award
and inclusion in the monograph, Exemplary Science for Resolving
Societal Challenges by the National Science Teachers Association. Former interns
have gone on to work at national research centers such as the University of
Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology, the Spinal Cord Injury
Center at the Palo Alto VA Hospital,
MITRE’s Nanosystems Group, and the Johns
Hopkins Space Telescope Science Institute. Many graduates of the
program have pursued careers in science, earning significant scholarships including the Ethyl and Albemarle Science Scholarship from the University of Richmond,
the Meyerhoff Scholarship from the University of Maryland Baltimore
County, the National Science Foundation's STEP program at Dickinson College, the John P. McNulty Scholars Program at St. Joseph University, and the Johnson Scholarship at Washington and Lee University. A lab manual based on the
girls' work was published in 2008, and several past interns still
earn royalties for ideas they developed out of their work in the program.
You can learn more about
E.S.S.R.E. through this
short video
(or visit one of the yearly program pages to watch one of theirs), and we sincerely hope that you might join us in our
endeavors. To
apply for the 2019 program (July 8-26), simply submit an
application to the
Project Director,
Program Description
Run in conjunction with the
RPCS 9th grade soil ecology project,
"The
Little Things that Run the World", E.S.S.R.E. offers adolescent
girls a unique and challenging educational opportunity and provides
educators around the country with labs and soil ecology lessons to help
implement the
Next Generation Science Standars in their classrooms and courses.
Participants in E.S.S.R.E. engage in a wide
variety of activities during their internships. Depending on the prior
skills and backgrounds of those involved, these can and have included:
-
performing
a broad general survey of the biotic and abiotic factors located within the
urban woodland on the school's campus using standard biodiversity protocols;
-
generating a baseline of data for studying soil microbes
and their environmental conditions from this survey;
- using the baseline data to design, and perform experimental
investigations into one specific aspect of soil microecology of the
participants own choosing;
- developing
these investigations into inquiry lesson plans
and the requisite support materials for use in other classrooms; and
-
modifying
and verifying both the research protocols and the lesson plans to make them
easily accessible to all schools, regardless of their physical or economic
situation (including urban schools, schools with inadequate funding, and
schools that teach populations of students traditionally under-represented
in science).
In addition, interns customize and prepare
their experiments, activities, lessons, and data for dispersion to the wider
science education community via the Internet, and each research team must create
their own web page to make available to other schools, teachers, and pupils all
the classroom materials produced through this program, along with the database
of information collected from the initial survey as well.
Finally, everyone involved with this project learns various general science
research skills, including specifically (but not limited to):
For their participation in the program, all
students are paid a small stipend.
Further Information
To learn more about E.S.S.R.E., follow one
of our links or click on one of our intern teams' photos to learn more about an individual
year's program.
To view future years click
here.
(last updated July 2019)
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E.S.S.R.E. 2016
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E.S.S.R.E. 2017 |
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E.S.S.R.E. 2018
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E.S.S.R.E. 2019
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