Nothing ruins water research like spending days collecting samples only to learn they were contaminated along the way. It’s the little mistakes that can invalidate scientific research.
Bahar Hassanpour, an assistant professor at UW-River Falls, wants to ensure that undergraduates have opportunities to learn proper lab and field techniques before they enter the workforce — where mistakes can be costly.
“I wish I had been trained on how to do field and lab work before I went to graduate school,” she says. “That kind of training prepares you for jobs working for industry, USGS, WDNR, and local governments.”
With funding from the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin, she and faculty and staff from UW-River Falls and UW-Madison created a two-week hands-on water course, titled “Special Topics in Freshwater Science Laboratory and Field Techniques.”
The goal of the course is to make learning — and making mistakes — fun.
Students from both universities have enrolled each of the two years the course has run. Any student from any university in Wisconsin, from freshman to graduate school levels, is eligible to apply for a spot in the course. Course fees and lodging are paid through a Freshwater Collaborative grant.
The course emphasizes overarching methodology to prepare students for the workforce.
Students learn the correct way to take water samples and the importance of precisely documenting clarity, temperature, and pH of the water in each area that samples are taken. Rather than learning how to use a specific piece of equipment, students are trained to develop step-by-step protocols to run any piece of equipment.
One of the highlights of this year’s course was a boat trip during which students took water samples from different locations along the St. Croix, Kinnickinnic and Mississippi Rivers. They then compared the results to learn how water quality varies depending on when and where the samples are taken.
“With these field experiences, the goal is to fill them with knowledge and give them time to practice,” says Heather Davis, a lab manager at UW-River Falls who co-teaches the course. “We reinforce that this is their safe space to learn. There are no ramifications that anything bad will happen. It helps them embrace the experience.”
For example, students experienced firsthand what happens when a filter tower is put together incorrectly or when the wrong label is put onto a sample or when samples are left in a hot car.
Heather Hatfull, a soil sciences major at UW-Falls, quickly learned the importance of planning, proper sample labeling, and taking extensive field notes.
“Everything was new! It was my first experience in a proper lab setting,” she says. “The course teaches you the importance of every step in the process, while giving you room to make mistakes and learn.”
The faculty and staff had enough grant funding left from developing and running the course to hire six students as summer interns. Those students are working on several projects at UW-River Falls. Research includes investigating how nitrogen and carbon leaches into soil, well water and lucimeter sampling, collecting greenhouse gas samples, and becoming more proficient at running the lab instruments. Students even built some of the research equipment themselves.
Their research should provide valuable insights into environmental risk assessment and management efforts and the interplay between soil and terrain, cropping systems, weather, and hydrological dynamics.
“It gives the students a really great opportunity to understand how to do this kind of research,” Davis says. “And it also gives farmers information about their wells and nitrate leaching and how cover crops impact that.”
Students will present their research at the annual Dairy Summit in November. The event will be hosted by the Dairy Innovation Hub in Madison and will give the students another valuable skill: explaining scientific data to other researchers and the public.
Catherine Roloff, a geology major at UW-River Falls, feels these hands-on experiences will get her one step closer to becoming an environmental geologist. She hopes to focus on sustainable natural resources management.
“This course, along with the additional internship position, has been helpful in developing the skills necessary to achieve my career goals,” she says. “The emphasis on data accuracy, proper sampling methods, and teamwork has helped me prepare for reality in environmental research.”