As a graduate student, I enrolled in the summer marine estuary course that my mentoring professor, Dr. Claudia T. Melear, instructed. Dr. Melear, Science Education professor in the Theory and Practice of Teacher Education department at UTK, had three other professors assist with instruction, Dr. Mitch Cruzan, UTK Ecology and Evolutionary Biologist, Dr. Stephanie Robinson, Professor of Math Education from Carson Newman College, TN, and Dr. Nathan Melear, visiting Geology Professor from University of Georgia. For more information about the Ossabaw Island course, please visit the UTK Ossabaw homepage.
My camping experience on the preserved Ossabaw Island was from May 26-May 30, 2001. All of the science 2001/2002 UTK interns that I evaluated for state licensure were enrolled in the course. I completed an inquiry-based experimental project with these interns concerning seining diversity between ocean shore and slough.
Additionally upon return, I constructed a webquest for a college or high school Biology course. Other course assignments included a reflective journal, bird project, and erosion project. Lastly as a group, we compiled our research data from the island and presented our results which were titled Diversity of Organisms Caught by Seining in the Ossabaw South Beach Slough versus the Shoreline at Low and High Tide.
Overall, the knowledge and experience concerning birds, sea life, and habitats were invaluable. The island trip afforded me the opportunity to experiment with nature in authentic inquiry from my own experiences - it was truly authentic learning and great FUN!! I particularly enjoyed the seining experiences while we gathered and inspected various forms of marine life. Ok, so I did complain slightly about the mosquitoes, but it is their habitat that I intruded.
