Three Lycoming College biology students interning with the Clean Water Institute this summer were selected by the Susquehanna River Heartland Coalition for Environmental Studies to participate in a week-long international workshop in Acadia National Park, Maine.
Students Miranda Giraldo, a junior from Hudson, N.H., and seniors Cory Trego, Pottstown, and Brian Gordon, Baltimore, Md., participated in the Acadian Intensive Program in Regional Conservation and Stewardship in July under the direction Jim N. Levitt, director of the program on conservation innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University.
The Acadian Program is a summer short course focused on large landscape-scale conservation. The program brings participants from around the world to learn about community‐based, landscape scale conservation using the Downeast Maine and Atlantic Canadian region as a living classroom and laboratory. Five teams were invited to the event, and the Lycoming group was one of two selected from the United States. Students and professionals representing Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize also were in attendance.
During the event, the Lycoming students prepared a three-hour PowerPoint presentation about the ecological issues of the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay. The students detailed the college’s involvement in several large landscape-scale conservation efforts aimed at improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. All participants were presented with various conservation issues facing nations across the Western Hemisphere. Students then brainstormed with their gathering of international colleagues to elicit practical new approaches to each conservation issue, according to Mel Zimmerman, Ph.D., professor of biology at Lycoming and director of the Clean Water Institute.
The students received a grant from the Degenstein Foundation and Harvard University to attend the program.
Lycoming College is a four-year, residential liberal arts and sciences school dedicated to the undergraduate education of 1,400 students. Its rigorous academic program, vibrant residential community and supportive faculty foster successful student outcomes. Lycoming offers 36 academic majors and is recognized as a Tier 1 institution by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1812 and located near the banks of the Susquehanna River in Williamsport, Pa., Lycoming is one of the 50 oldest colleges in the nation. For more information, visit www.lycoming.edu.