As Stone Laboratory celebrates its 100th anniversary on Gibraltar Island this year, Ohio teachers are also celebrating the lab’s field trip program — with decades of impacts on students around the state.
Since 1973, Stone Lab has offered experiential science learning opportunities for students that may be unavailable to them in traditional classroom settings. The lab’s field trips allow students in grades 5-12 to participate in real, immersive, and hands-on science on Lake Erie.
“Stone Lab provided one of the most beneficial field trips that we’ve ever been on,” said Wendy Eck, a science teacher at Genoa Elementary School in Genoa, Ohio. “Many students don’t realize that Lake Erie is in our backyard with all of these resources. And then we can take things that we speak about in the classroom, like the quality of our water, and apply it in real life.”
Stone Lab field trips provide a variety of hands-on experiences for students: for example, a Lake Erie science cruise aboard a research vessel, a fish lab, a plankton lab, invertebrate sampling, sport fishing instruction, and more. The lab offers both day trips and overnight, two-day trips for teachers to choose from.
Eck said her fifth-grade students participated in the plankton lab, collecting plankton out on the lake and then identifying the organisms under a microscope. The students also rode on a Stone Lab research vessel, helping with monitoring water quality and trawling for fish that they later studied in a lab setting.
“Some of them had never been on a boat before,” Eck said. “Seeing things firsthand, and actually being the person to collect the information and record it for other people to learn from, was pretty awesome.”
For Ann Marie McDonnell, a middle school teacher at Columbus School for Girls in Bexley, Ohio, the field trips are an annual tradition — the school has been going up to Stone Lab for over 30 years.
“There’s a wow factor. It’s nice to see the students come alive. Things that I’ve tried to prep them for before we go, they see it firsthand and for me that’s a win-win.”
Ann Marie McDonnell
“For the students, it gives them an opportunity to take field notes as they’re immersed in the activity,” McDonnell said. “It’s hands-on, and we all know this form of education increases engagement. It grows critical thinking. It also builds teamwork because most of the activities they engage in are with other students.”
The field trips are particularly special because students get to use authentic scientific equipment, McDonnell said, and the data that they collect becomes a part of real datasets that Stone Lab uses.
“It creates a greater awareness within the students of what real science looks like,” she said. “You’re not behind a computer, you’re also not behind a book all the time. You’re actually getting down in the dirt, or down in the lake. So when they come back to the classroom, they really have an appreciation of what you do as a scientist.”
“There’s a wow factor,” McDonnell continued. “It’s nice to see the students come alive. Things that I’ve tried to prep them for before we go, they see it firsthand and for me that’s a win-win.”
Genoa Elementary’s field trips to Stone Lab were made possible through scholarships from the Ottawa County Community Foundation. “The donation makes a big difference for students”, Eck said.
“I’ve been teaching for 27 years, and I’ve never had an experience like this,” Eck said. “The grant gave us this opportunity and let all of our fifth graders attend.”
Another key part of the experience: students learn about new career paths and academic opportunities in the sciences, Eck said.
“It was beneficial for them to see this real world experience, to see that you can actually go to school for this,” she said. “Students learn that maybe they might want to do this when they grow up or consider it a college major. So I think that makes it extra special.”
For more information about Stone Lab’s science field trips, visit the laboratory’s website or contact Kelly Dress at dress.3@osu.edu.
Ohio Sea Grant is supported by The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University Extension, and NOAA Sea Grant, a network of 34 Sea Grant programs nation-wide dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of marine and Great Lakes resources. Stone Laboratory is Ohio State’s island campus on Lake Erie and is the research, education, and outreach facility of Ohio Sea Grant and part of CFAES School of Environment and Natural Resources.