State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

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A Summer of Hands-on, Minds-On Science

Four interns worked with Billy D’Andrea in Lamont’s Core Repository this summer. From left: Evan Lipton, Addison Bent, Siddhartha Das, Rebecca Holt and Billy D’Andrea. Photo: Rebecca Fowler
Four interns worked with Billy D’Andrea in Lamont’s Core Repository this summer. From left: Addison Bent, Evan Lipton, Siddhartha Das, Rebecca Holt and Billy D’Andrea. Photo: Rebecca Fowler

A new, donor-led internship program offered by the Center for Climate and Life provides high school students the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on research experience while getting a feel for what a career in science involves.

Twelve students from New York and New Jersey are spending the month of July in laboratories at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, working with Climate and Life researchers. The summer internship program enables students to spend four weeks exploring what it means to be an earth scientist.

Students spend full days in the lab, wrestling with research questions, conducting experiments, analyzing data and reflecting on their results. Exposure to academic and career paths in the sciences comes from their mentor, lab group members, and lunchtime discussions with a different scientist each Friday. And just like professional scientists, the students will present their research at a symposium open to the Lamont community.

The topics they’re investigating span the vast range of climate research conducted by Center for Climate and Life scientists. The four students paired with climate scientist Billy D’Andrea are trying to determine what sea level was like in the Bahamas during the most recent interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago.

Intern Rebecca Holt works with samples in the Lamont Core Repository. Photo: Rebecca Fowler
Intern Rebecca Holt works with samples in the Lamont Core Repository. Photo: Rebecca Fowler

“Looking at this period, seeing how high sea level rose and comparing that to the future will help us to see how sea level might rise in the future,” said intern Rebecca Holt.

The team is set up in a laboratory in Lamont’s Core Repository. A recent Thursday found them preparing samples and slides, examining these under a microscope and chatting with D’Andrea about a study published on their research topic—one they hope to expand on through their own work.

“We have a fair amount of freedom to explore. With this paper, we think the author’s findings might be incorrect, so we’re trying to compare our findings with his,” said intern Addison Bent.

Down the hall, the six students working with geochemist Sidney Hemming were gathered around a table with Hemming and her undergraduate interns; though the group was on break, they were eager to discuss their research. Their goal is to learn more about the past climate of southern Africa, and its relationship to global ocean circulation and climate variability over the past five million years.

In early 2016, Hemming participated in a research expedition off South Africa, where she was part of a group collecting sediment cores from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Analysis of the sediments will contribute to understanding of rainfall and runoff, weathering on Africa, and changes in the Agulhas Current—a major ocean current that flows along the eastern side of southern Africa.

Hemming’s students are working with the sediment cores sediments collected during her research cruise. “What we’re doing is taking the samples, scraping them, and preparing them for the XRF scanner to get the measurements of the different elements in the core. Once this is done, we’ll have new information that will tell us about how sediment travels and how it changes over time,” said intern Elmina David.
Authentic research experience has been shown to benefit high school students in a variety of ways. Inquiry-based learning facilitates understanding of the scientific method and enriches their intellectual development.

“This has been a huge learning experience. It’s a really good combination of seeing the sometimes tedious work that goes into the science and getting an understanding of how science is done,“ said intern Andrew Chelli.

Intern Addison Bent at work in the Lamont Core Repository. Photo: Rebecca Fowler
Intern Evan Lipton at work in the Lamont Core Repository. Photo: Rebecca Fowler

Programs such as this also have the ability to attract students to careers in science and other Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

“One of my reasons for wanting to be a part of this program is that I was interested in doing science in college. I wanted to find out if it meshed with me, and this has pointed me in the direction of wanting to do more research in the future,” said intern Tess Strohm.

The students are not the only ones who benefit from the internship program. Their work contributes meaningful data and results to the research that Center scientists conduct.

“Part of what the students are doing is logistical, like making sample request tables or using simple stratigraphic techniques. But these are important skills for them to have, and the results of these exercises are really valuable to me as a scientist,” said Hemming.

Some of the students will choose not to pursue a career in STEM, but the skills they develop this summer at Lamont—problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration—will be essential to their success in any field.

The Climate and Life internship program is one of several on the Lamont campus this summer. In all, more than 50 high school students and 10 undergraduates are participating in programs including the Secondary School Field Research Program, in which students conduct hands-on research at Piermont Marsh and in Lamont labs; a partnership program in which students from Lycée Français de New York are working with Lamont scientists on the fluid mechanics of lava flows and on analyzing corals and trace metals; and the Climate and Life program. Undergraduate students are also participating in internships with Lamont scientists analyzing global databases.

The Center for Climate and Life was established at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to mobilize scientists across disciplines to accelerate our understanding of how climate impacts the security of food, water, and shelter, and to explore sustainable energy solutions.

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