As Stone Lab celebrates its 100th Anniversary at Gibraltar Island this year, the occasion marks a century of educating students via hands-on coursework about Lake Erie sciences — all thanks to decades of effort by the lab’s passionate faculty.

One such faculty member, Lisa Kutschbach-Brohl, a Stone Lab instructor since 2003, recently reflected on her time at The Ohio State University’s island campus and her impact on students there.

“It’s a wonderful place to teach with the environment that we have here and with all the hands-on opportunities for students,” said Kutschbach-Brohl said, who teaches courses on topics such as the biology of local plants and wetland plant field identification.

Kutschbach-Brohl took her first class at Stone Lab in 1989 as an Ohio State student in the School of Environment and Natural Resources, also working with school children visiting Gibraltar Island for field trips. She fondly remembers helping kids seine fish on Alligator Bar, a reef on the island’s western tip, and leading edible plant walks. The experience inspired her to get her master’s degree in environmental science at Ohio State with a specialty in wetlands, continuing to take classes at Stone Lab.

“I was very excited that after I got my master’s, I was able to start teaching a class here in 2003,” Kutschbach-Brohl said. “I’ve been teaching just about every summer since that time.”

As a student and a teacher at Stone Lab, Kutschbach-Brohl has enjoyed fully immersing herself in different subjects, such as fish ecology and aquatic plants, helping students have those same experiences.

“I get to take students out in the field every day to learn about the beautiful places and environments we have here on the Lake Erie islands,” she said. “I really enjoy getting to know my students well. It’s just fun to see them get very excited about everything – that’s my favorite part about teaching.”

“To actually be out in the field, it gives you a whole new perspective that you might not be aware of unless you actually see the dynamic environment in front of you. Stone Lab gives people an opportunity to see an environment go through different weather changes, different seasonal changes, and meet a lot of researchers that are coming and going.”
Lisa Kutschbach-Brohl

The time she spent at Stone Lab helped shape her career, Kutschbach-Brohl said, leading her to go on to work as a biological technician with the U.S. Geological Survey at their Lake Erie Biological Field Station and for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Research Station in Sandusky, Ohio.

“It’s given me a real purpose to be able to educate people here,” she said. “All the varied experiences that you can have here and all the people you meet has just been a very important thing for me, personally.”

Kutschbach-Brohl also serves as chair of the Lake Erie Islands Conservancy, founded in 2000 as part of the Black Swamp Conservancy in Northwest Ohio, with the goal of protecting different types of habitats on the islands. She credited Stone Lab with providing resources and support to the organization over the years.

“When our conservancy started our Nature Camp program, Stone Lab made sure that we could bring the camp kids up here for a day, making sure we got instructors,” she said. “Some of the professors from Stone Lab came and did programs on snails and slugs, spiders, and of course snakes from Dr. Kristen Stanford. So Stone Lab was a really good community resource for us for our educational efforts.”

When students take her courses at Stone Lab, Kutschbach-Brohl hopes they walk away with the basics: knowledge of plant families and how to use keys to identify plants in different environments. But she also hopes Stone Lab is preparing students to be better stewards of Lake Erie.

“I also hope that they come away with an appreciation of the environment and an enthusiasm for it,” she said. “Because really what’s at the bottom of everything I do is to help see things preserved.”

“To actually be out in the field, it gives you a whole new perspective that you might not be aware of unless you actually see the dynamic environment in front of you,” she continued. “Stone Lab gives people an opportunity to see an environment go through different weather changes, different seasonal changes, and meet a lot of researchers that are coming and going.”

To learn more about education opportunities and courses at Ohio State’s island campus, visit Stone Lab’s website.

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.