Northern Kentucky University Summer Experience For Young Scientists
Created By: Ray Dodson
During the past two weeks I have learned many things. One thing I have learned was about environmental justice and how it can be addressed. Environmental justice is access for all persons to an environment that is clean. Environmental justice should be handled in a respectful and peaceful manner. The class had a speaker her name was Marti Sinclair. In Mrs. Sinclair neighborhood a company was trying to build a cement plant she gathered a group of house wife’s and they worked together and knocked the plant out of her neighborhood peacefully, but she had one problem what about her friends that the plant might go to their neighborhood how would she help them.
There are many careers in environmental science the one that stands out in my mind is a hydrologist. The hydrologists that spoke to the class was Marc Hult. Marc Hult was from the Daniel Carter Beard Environmental Education Center. Mr. Hult talked about the Linking River water shed. A watershed is an area that runs into a river. The watershed problem began with urban problems in the 1st century AD Spain and 6th century Rome. I discovered that the hydrologic cycle is the most important cycle it makes the world go round. The hydrologic cycle cools the earth. I learned many different words from Mr. Hult words such as percolate, infiltration, and fair weather. Fair weather means when it doesn’t rain.
The class went on a field trip through Covington looking at brown fields. A brown field is a property that is vacant or utilized. I really didn’t realized that Covington had so many brown fields but then again I didn’t know what a brown field was. One brown field that sticks out in my mind was a building on Donaldson. The building on Donaldson use to make signs but they went bankrupt. Mrs. Frye stated that the building still had a barrel of petroleum in the south part.
As far as the web page and the organization of our web page is concern. I’ll stick to Microsoft Front page. Once I got the hang of things I really liked it. Jennifer and I developed web page on The SEYS program. I believed that the hardest part was reading the HTML code. But hey life is hard. For the record I really like Jennifer and my web page.
The geographic Information System or the GIS can be used in Environmental Science in many ways. The class used it to form a buffer around a contaminated area to inform people around that area which warned people of the possible danger. People you won’t even believe uses the GIS. People like a pizza man, fire fighters, police officers, and EMT. They all use the GIS to figure out the shortest route possible.
I really enjoyed this workshop. I learned many things as well as just sharpening my skills I already knew. This workshop was a great experience for me. The staff was very nice, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to run this workshop. Dr. Wheeler and Dr. Long was very awesome they kept their patience with us that meant a lot to me considering we are Holmes students. Susan taught the class about GIS that was something I didn’t know any thing about. Claree’ kept us on track whenever we needed her she was there to help us. The whole staff shared their knowledge with us.
In conclusion I want to thank the whole staff for everything they have done for the group as well as giving us some of their knowledge. I will carry the information I have learned from the past two weeks for many years. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to attend this workshop.