RE Log - Spring 2020

SPRING 2020 Ransom Everglades LOG 19 Dr. Kristine Stump believes she teaches better on a boat than from a book. When she arrived to Ransom Everglades in 2018, Stump aspired to bring the most valuable elements of her marine science background into the classroom – which meant getting out of the traditional classroom and onto Biscayne Bay. Dr. Stump teamed up with two fellow RE teachers who also happened to be former classmates from the PhD program at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Dr. Stump, a shark ecologist, Dr. Brooke Gintert, a coral specialist, and Dr. Kelly Jackson, a marine geologist, put their minds and passions together and proposed a new course – Marine Field Research – at RE’s upper school for 2019-20. The goal of the course, which advances Ransom Everglades’ long tradition of experiential learning, is to get students out in the “field” – the bay, the ocean, marine geological sites – as much as possible to collect their own data and do their own research. The 23 upper school students who signed up for Marine Field Research did not need to purchase a textbook – the class doesn’t have one – but they did need to learn to scuba dive. Marine Field Research New course gets students out of the classroom and onto the bay Field science is actually going out and collecting data, and collecting meaningful data requires preparation, knowledge, skills, persistence and thinking outside the box. We want to teach students how to observe something, how to ask good questions, how to do a literature review – to find out what we already know – and then come up with a hypothesis. Then a plan. Figure out how you are going to test your hypothesis, then go out and collect your data. We want them to travel to remote places, getting in the water, managing their gear, driving boats, hitching trailers, tying knots, organizing into teams, checking their lists – and deal with what will inevitably go wrong. When they fail at their first attempt at data collection, they have to come up with a different way, try again and keep repeating that until they get it. We also want to teach how to analyze data, graph it, do statistical analysis and then write about it. Present it to an audience of peers. Defend your conclusions. Share it persuasively with the science community, and share it clearly and succinctly on social media. We want to teach the full scientific process. Dr. Kristine Stump with fellow Marine Field Research teachers, Dr. Brooke Gintert and Dr. Kelly Jackson. Dr. Kristine Stump STEMat RE