Students Gain Valuable Experience Through Summer Research
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unded through a variety of sources, nearly three dozen students took part in summer research projects. Their studies already are contributing to the community as well as enhancing their future prospects in their fields of study. Elizabeth E. McHone, a junior from Ripon, looked at the ethics of buying and consuming non-local food at home and on campus and its effects on the environment, local economies and our health. As a local foods intern with the Office of Community Engagement, she also spent time educating the Ripon College community about local food issues and inciting renewed interest in Elizabeth local food and susMcHone ’11 tainability by working with Sodexo, local producers, social media and members of the community. “I had been interested in things like environmental ethics, agriculture and cooking, but had never heard of the local food movement before the internship,” McHone says. “I learned about some seriously depressing facts about the implications of our nation’s food systems on our health, local economies and the environment, but also about the things people were doing to combat those effects.” She says talking to one person led her to three others, who each introduced her to three more, until she had more than 50 contacts in the Ripon area who are connected to the local foods movement. She helped form a network in Ripon centered on a local foods movement, made short videos of interviews with Ripon students/staff and community members and posted them on YouTube and Facebook, and set up an e-mail list, Twitter account, a page on Ripon College’s Web site, and a
homepage on Ning. “The idea was to utilize as many social networking sites as possible to reach different groups of people and provide opportunities for differing levels of involvement,” McHone says. “I’ve planned some events for the upcoming semesters, including a visit to a farm in Ripon, viewings of relevant films, cookouts, gardening days, trips to local food events in Wisconsin and a webinar. We’re also working with food service to find ways to incorporate more local food into campus dining, start a composting system and encourage recycling. It’s an ongoing project, which I hope will continue to progress after I leave Ripon.” A big part of the summer efforts was starting a community garden on the Ripon campus. “It took a while to get approval to use space on campus, but we were able to get a spot right by the Commons and start work in late July, so there’s groundwork for a bigger push next year … with plenty of room for expansion next year into individual and group plots for the campus and greater community,” McHone says. McHone says her work has helped guide the focus of her education and, in some ways, consolidated her interests in biology, botany and humanities like philosophy and anthropology. “This project has shown me how I could incorporate all of these things, plus community service, into studying humans’ interactions with the environment through agriculture,” she says. “I know that the people I’ve met and the things I’ve learned (or will learn) through this project will be invaluable to me in the future. I feel pretty lucky to have ended up at a school that provides for students to pursue their interests to this degree and make an impact on the community.” Having such an impact also is important to Meagan Kochel, a senior from Racine, Wis., who studied chemical/pharmaceutical pollution in Silver Creek in Ripon. She says many recent studies have found levels of various pharmaceuticals and common healthcare products in lakes and
rivers near where wastewater is dumped. Anything humans ingest has to come out eventually in our waste, she says, and most wastewater plants don’t have the technology or infrastructure to filter out these chemicals. Meagan Kochel ’10 She looked at several common products, including caffeine, which is in many foods and beverages we consume; sucralose, a thrichlorinated sugar substitute with yet unknown impacts on the environment; triclosan, an antibacterial agent found in many soaps and hand sanitizers; acetaminophen; and ibuprofen. “The major problems with these products is that many of them alter behavioral patterns of organisms, change their physiology or are toxic to both them and/or the organisms they feed on,” Kochel says. “I felt this was important to study because, although many studies have shown increasing effects in water sources near larger urban areas, I thought it would be interesting to have a profile for a more remote place such as Ripon.” She says most of her results to date are inconclusive because of the short amount of time available. “I do plan to continue the research throughout the semester in order to get more concrete results,” she says. “This has been such a wonderful opportunity to pursue my study because I had the opportunity to go through the entire process of designing and carrying out my own research. The knowledge and experience I gained was invaluable and will be as well when I am applying to graduate schools. This is an area I would really like to make a difference in someday, whether it be as an activist, speaking about the importance of alternative methods of prescription when possible, or as a researcher actually taking and analyzing samples. My greatest concern FALL 2009 9