Mountain Lakes - A Student Experience Second to None: Video Transcript

Cody Green [senior Zoology major]: Hi. My name is Cody Green. I'm a senior, undergraduate at Miami University's Zoology department. I work in the Craig Williamson ecology lab. I'm here at Glacier National Park, and we are studying carbon cycling in these lakes. I got the opportunity through the university's [Undergraduate] Summer Scholars. And we came up here and, obviously, this is beautiful. I've gotten the chance to work in the lab as well as the field, and it's been great. It's been an unbelievable experience. I think any undergraduate student should, if they can, get the opportunity to come out and work in the field.

Kevin Rose [Zoology graduate student]: Undergrads in the lab not only have the opportunity to go out to some beautiful field sites, but they also get the opportunity to learn techniques that they can't learn in the classroom. Hiking up to a glacier — not many classrooms are on glaciers. But by doing this, they get access to not only world-class resources and really high-end instrumentation, they also get an experience that's second to none. They get the opportunity to learn from senior scientists, to potentially get their work published along side of other top scientists but also just the experience of what is it like to conduct research in a field setting. Leave the classroom. Get out into the field. And what is that really like.

[December 2009]