VIRGIN ISLANDS-BOUND: Brick eighth-graders, team from Marine
Academy of Technology and Environmental Science in Stafford win
QuikSCience Challenge
Their Caribbean vocation
BY TRISTAN J.
SCHWEIGER
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
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In May, students from MATES in Stafford and Veterans Memorial
Middle School in Brick will travel to the British Virgin Islands to
participate in research on marine animals and to teach local
students. The all-expenses-paid trip was the first-place prize in
the QuikSCience Challenge.
It definitely won't be the usual school field trip.
Earlier this month, a team of eighth-graders from Veterans
Memorial Middle School in Brick and a high school team from the
Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Science in Stafford
won a trip to the British Virgin Islands.
The teams placed first in their respective divisions in the
QuikSCience Challenge, a New Jersey-New York-Connecticut competition
which focuses on environmental science.
Both teams' projects looked at the effects of stormwater runoff
and neighborhood pollution on bays and oceans.
"I wanted them to look at the ocean not simply as a place to surf
and swim. I wanted them to understand that they are the protectors
of our environment," said Suzanne Stojka, a Veterans Memorial
science teacher who coached the Brick team. The second-place prize
was a three-day trip to Sandy Hook Marine Lab.
The QuikSCience Challenge event is a collaboration between the
University of Southern California's Wrigley Institute for
Environmental Studies and Quiksilver Inc., a company that produces
surfing apparel and other items.
The competition has been a West Coast event but this year,
Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken joined with USC and
Quiksilver to offer an East Coast contest.
During the weeklong Virgin Islands trip scheduled for May,
students will participate in such research as tagging marine animals
and giving presentations to local students.
The MATES students' project involved, in part, creating a
research proposal on riparian buffers, a method of preventing runoff
from making its way into bodies of water, according to coach David
Werner, a marine biology and biology teacher at MATES, part of the
Ocean County Vocational-Technical School District.
Like Stojka, Werner said the program helps teach students how
they can have an impact on local environmental issues.
"I think the main message was that they can be stewards of the
community, and of the Barnegat Bay and of the environment — that
they can go out and make a difference," Werner said.
The Veterans Memorial eighth-grade team included Amanda
Alvarado-Anderson, Peter Chace, Mark Hannam, Cheryl Harvey, Sarah
McGowan, Bryanne McMillen and Matthew Schroeder.
The team created a water demo table, a model landscape with a
water pump that showed how pollution moves downstream from
neighborhood streets into streams and eventually into the bay and
ocean. The table was the creation of Chace, 13, who took a simpler
idea from Stojka and elaborated.
"She had an idea to do it on paper, just use little drops of food
coloring and spray it with water," Chace said.
"He's our engineer," Stojka said, standing near Chace on Tuesday
as he demonstrated the table at the school.
The teams also taught lessons about the Barnegat Bay ecosystem
and pollution to younger students. Brick's Alvarado-Anderson said
the teaching component was her favorite part.
"I liked presenting to the sixth-grade class. They seemed very
interested, and I think that they learned from this," said
Alvarado-Anderson, 14.
Tristan J. Schweiger: (732) 557-5734 or tschweiger@app.com
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