The Alliance has been very busy with summer programs at all three hubs! Students from each hub participated in the SEAS Bridge to PhD program, an 8-week long fellowship at Penn State University (see the
May 2022 issue of the Island Tides for more information). Here’s what else participants at each hub have been up to this summer:
The
Guam Hub hosted three summer programs this year: NSF SEAS Island Alliance High School Internship, Micronesian Bridge to Bachelors, and Navigating Home! With a mix of gender identities, GPA, and familial backgrounds, our ten summer high school interns shared one thing in common: they all had minimal science research background and were eager to engage! We teamed the students with faculty and undergraduate student mentors who inspired them and ultimately cultivated confident young scientists. In the Micronesian Bridge to Bachelors program, we had our first time in-person fellows from Saipan, CNMI (2) and Koror, Palau (2), and a virtual fellow from Majuro, Marshall Islands. Lastly, we hosted our very first Navigating Home fellow! By participating in this program, we partnered our fellow with an agency that was in line with her career goals and aspirations. All the while, we hosted weekly Near Peer seminars, where participants from all programs interacted with each other.
The
Puerto Rico Hub led a full field week summer workshop experience with 14 undergraduates of Centro TORTUGA. The students participated in a spring seminar that prepared them for research; the workshop was the culmination of that hard work, and provided hands-on, place-based experiences with an iconic Puerto Rican natural resource. The workshop consisted of an intensive work week at Laguna Grande, a bioluminescent lagoon located within Para La Naturaleza’s Cabezas de San Juan reserve located in Fajardo. Small groups of 3-4 students were paired with a research mentor to focus on different research projects including arthropod diversity, zooplankton diversity, water quality, and mangrove and sargassum impacts on the lagoon. On the final day of the summer workshop experience, students presented the results of their research projects at Universidad Interamericana, to an audience that included family, friends, and peers. The hub’s digital communications intern, Mónica Rodríguez Pabón, published a
StoryMap highlighting the student research on bioluminescent dinoflagellates in a saltwater lagoon located in the northeastern region Puerto Rico.
During the summer, TORTUGA alumnas Ninoshka Betancourt and Patricia Vidal completed their time as Workforce Fellows with Puerto Rico DRNA and Para La Naturaleza, respectively, and also assisted with the summer field workshop experience. Both have been accepted into marine science graduate programs at the University of Gibraltar!
Students from the
USVI Hub participated in the Junior Ocean Explorers (JOE) and Youth Ocean Explorers (YOE) programs, and the University of the Virgin Islands’ (UVI) Emerging Caribbean Scientists (ECS) program. Twenty-five students participated in the in-person JOE program and 23 students participated in the hybrid YOE program. The YOE program included a watershed ghut hike, bioluminescence kayak tours, and fish ID snorkel. YOE parents got to participate in refresher dives with their children, and some were also scuba certified to encourage more participation in follow-up dives.
Through the ECS program at UVI, the USVI hub supported 14 UVI undergraduates and recent graduates in internship positions with our territorial partners, having internships available on both St. Thomas and St. Croix. Throughout the summer Workforce Fellows Zola Roper, Delsabriana Gonzalez, and Jahnyah Brooks were all neer-peer mentors to undergraduate and high school students during the summer interventions.
