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July 10, 2006
Through River Summer 2006, MMC Professor Uses Hudson River as Classroom and Lab
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(Pleasantville, NY) As participants in River Summer 2006, a literal boatload of environmentally-minded professors, including MMC faculty members Kelsey Jordahl and Phillip Meyers, will spend three weeks roughing it and learning from each other on the Hudson River and in an Adirondack field camp. Hailing from more than half of the 44 member institutions of the Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities, faculty members, as well as middle and high school teachers, will learn about the development of the Hudson and its watershed, while preparing curriculum units for their courses. River Summer 2006 runs from Thursday, July 6 through Saturday, July 29. Participants will conduct most of their work on the R/V Seawolf, a research vessel operated by the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The mission of River Summer 2006 is to explore innovative methods of teaching and learning, using hands-on approaches from the perspective of multiple disciplines. The faculty members will progress through modules covering the New York Harbor, Lower, Mid, and Upper Hudson and the Adirondacks. The program was pilot tested last year; in this year's expanded program, participants will undertake a multitude of studies, focusing on the interconnectedness of many disciplines. Projects include water sampling, sediment coring, archaeology, biodiversity, wastewater, policies and laws surrounding the river, geology, history, and culture.
Kelsey Jordahl, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of physics at MMC, and specializes in physics, earth science and oceanography. He earned a doctorate in oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and joined Marymount Manhattan in the fall of 2005, after having served as a lecturer at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His participation in River Summer 2006 will concentrate on the New York Harbor and the Adirondacks. He will also be teaching a course called "Mapping the Hudson Channel" during the New York Harbor module.
Philip Meyers has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland and teaches mathematics and finance at MMC. With River Summer he is working to measure salinity in the river and to determine the extent of tidal activity. During his time on the boat, the team is also studyig some of the politics and economics surrounding urban renewal at the waterfront in Yonkers.
Formed over the last two years under the leadership of the Pace Academy for the Environment (PAE), the Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities (ECHVCU) consists of 44 institutions throughout the Hudson watershed that have gathered for teaching, research and educational projects they could not do separately. Its members are pledged to a new era of cooperation through contribution of the skills and talents of faculty from diverse disciplines and institutions across the region. Pace University is secretariat for the Environmental Consortium.
For more information on River Summer 2006, visit www.riversummer.org.
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