6 minute read
Take Me to the Water
Early on a chilly Saturday morning in November, the seven students in Chris Gawle’s AP Environmental Science course gathered at a site just off Myers Park Drive to put into practice the water monitoring lessons they had been learning in class.
After doughnuts and hot chocolate, Mr. Gawle reviewed safety guidelines, showed students the testing sites, and made assignments for the morning. The students put on their boots and waders, picked up equipment like nets, turbidity tubes, chemical kits, and Hanna instruments, and headed off confidently to complete their assigned water measurement. They spent the next few hours testing and recording chemical water-quality indicators, such as nitrate, phosphate, and turbidity levels, along with assessing biological indicators among macro invertebrates.
Mr. Gawle has the process down to a science, so to speak, as this is the 16th year his AP juniors and seniors have conducted scientific field surveys of water quality and macrobenthos diversity. Prior to the Myers Park Drive location, Mr. Gawle took his students on an overnight trip to Asheville to conduct a similar stream survey in the Pisgah Forest. While productive, that trip came with scheduling logistics. In 2007, upon hearing that Mr. Gawle was looking for a suitable local site, the Premo family (whose daughter Katie Premo Hottel ’08 was a student in Mr. Gawle’s class) suggested their Airlie neighborhood along Myers Park Drive.
The new site in suburban Charlotte is ideal because it allows the student scientists to measure the effect of environmental input in two types of water—ponds and a stream—as well as map the variants in quality based on proximity of the water sources to Providence Road versus the homeowners.
“Even more important than the location is the process,” explains Mr. Gawle. “This project gives students the opportunity to apply the lessons learned in class to real-world applications and be a part of a long-term study, just as career scientists are.”
By conducting the same studies, at the same site, at the same time every year, the students can analyze trends and assess whether those trends differ based on distance from runoff surfaces. While the water quality has been consistently fair to good across the two sites, the study has shown species diversity to be highly variable.
In August, senior Adina Peck, who was a member of Mr. Gawle’s AP class the previous school year, presented “Long- Term Monitoring of Briar Creek Water Quality and Macrobenthos Diversity” to the Airlie Homeowners Association. In a detailed presentation, Adina broke down the science in a thorough, yet digestible way, detailing 10-plus years’ worth of data collected by more than 100 Country Day students. She also provided tips on what the homeowners could do to ensure better water quality, such as using time-release fertilizer and picking up pet waste.
“I am proud that Adina stepped up to present our body of work. She represented Country Day well,” said Mr. Gawle. “I also can’t thank the Premos enough for hosting us all these years. In fact, even though they recently moved, they made sure the new owners would continue to allow us to use their driveway as our starting base!”
Instilling a Passion, Making a Lasting Impact
The water monitoring project is just one way Mr. Gawle brings science to life for his students. Another popular activity is the Eco-Column Project, in which students build an ecosystem, add a global problem—such as acid rain or climate change—and then analyze the environmental impact. Students write mini-proposals, conduct their own research, analyze their data, and collaborate on their findings.
“They learn how to handle large amounts of complex data, and I teach them how to present their information correctly in tables and graphs,” explains Mr. Gawle. “By the end of the process, they've completed a 20-30 page college-level paper and gained the confidence to do well in college science courses.”
“I remember that felt like such a big project at the time,” says Christina Mills White ’06, a planner at Yellowstone National Park, who is currently focused on visitor use management. “What I can appreciate now is that Chris was teaching us the fundamental process we’d use over and over again in every college lab, then on a much larger scale in grad school, and then almost daily in our careers.
“The skill set of trying to wrap your head around a complex system, understand the drivers of that system, gather data around it, test solutions, and present complex information clearly to an audience is invaluable, and something many people never learn to do well. We’re working through the same process here at Yellowstone as we try to get a handle on our dramatic increase in visitation, how it affects park resources and visitor experience, and what we can do about it. It’s the same process and complex thinking that Chris teaches.”
Even though in high school Christina hadn’t thought of herself as someone who is good at science, much less who would pursue a career in the sciences, AP Environmental Science became her favorite class at Country Day, “partly because Chris is so enthusiastic and cares so deeply about what he is teaching, but also because he made science feel so human and connective,” she says. “This was 12 years ago, but I distinctly remember sitting in his class and thinking, ‘Wow, this is so important.’”
Sarah Gledhill ’12, an energy advisor with CLEAResult, an energy efficiency consulting company, echoes that sentiment. “Mr. Gawle really helped open my eyes to the world around me,” she says. “In high school, you’re still a kid. You put trash in the trash bin and don’t think twice about where it’s going. I distinctly remember a slide he showed us about the one-way waste stream and how there is no circular feedback into that system. He really drilled in the ideas of sustainability and that, in so many ways, humans are taking more than they’re putting in and we can’t expect that to last forever.
Whether or not his students choose to pursue a career in environmental science or sustainability, Mr. Gawle’s goal is to get them ready for the next level. While he is proud of the fact that his students consistently earn top marks on the AP exam (five 4s and five 5s in 2017, for example), he says, “I want my students to leave for college feeling ready to handle an undergraduate thesis. I love hearing that they’re successfully preparing lab reports in their college science classes and that their professors are using their reports as examples to the rest of the class.”
“That was powerful and I remember many days walking out of his class a little bit enraged. Then you get over the dramatic phase and ask ‘what can I do about it?’ The motivation I walked out of that class with carried over to college and I declared my major in environmental studies during my first semester at Middlebury. Today in my career, because I know the science and how systems are supposed to work, I am able to help change human behavior and make a difference in climate change,” says Sarah.
“He may have trained me a bit too well,” jokes James Furr ’15, a junior studying sustainable technology and physics at Appalachian State University. “The projects I did in Mr. Gawle’s class were tougher than the assignments I have had so far in my sustainable development courses. It felt like real science; there are not a lot of classes that give you that kind of hands-on experience, even in college.” James, who is a member of Appalachian’s successful solar vehicle team, also credits the biology and organic chemistry classes he took while at Country Day in influencing him and preparing him for college.
Christina sums up the influence Mr. Gawle has on his students this way: “He helped me realize I could make an incredible career out of something that I cared about that is also outdoors, adventurous, and important.”
