Service Learning: Water Quality Testing

Service Learning: Water Quality Testing
Date	Saturday, February 17, 2018
Time	10:00 am – 2:00 pm PST
Where	Japanese Gulch stream in Mukilteo, WA
Type of Event	Service-Learning
Sponsored by	Dept. of Anthropology, CSEL
Contact Phone	425-640-1882
Contact Email	kacie.mccarty@email.edcc.edu

2.      What organization sponsored this event or activity and what were the goals of the event?  Describe the goals or purpose in a sentence or two.

The purpose of this activity was to test and analyze the water quality of a stream using chemical and biological ways.

3.      Briefly (in a sentence or two), summarize your duties at the event and include photo documentation.

When testing the pH of the water sample, I helped add 10 drops of Wide Range Indicator and read the pH at the end as well.

4.      In at least one paragraph, reflect on how this experience affected you and your thoughts on the role of science in society and the importance of your service to your community. This reflective essay should be written in one or more paragraphs (7-10 sentence bio (150-200 words) minimum, not including items 1-3).  It should be something that can easily be slightly edited to strengthen a personal statement for an academic program or a job or internship application.

When I was a child, I heard that water was the source of life. To tell the truth, I never thought about this deeply even though I can't get out of water myself every day. Testing the quality of water was what I usually saw from some TV program. At first, I always thought that science was only the basis for our life. But after I participated in this service learning, I found that science did not only supply but also improve the objective facts of our life. Scientists try to achieve a goal by providing information, or by supporting the results of a specific policy. This service was such important because this is a formal project, not just observation. Our school will regularly submit the test results to the relevant departments. According to the data obtained, we can be more targeted to control the water problem. As a result, the quality of water can be maintained or even improved.

5.      In at least one paragraph, make explicit connections between what you did for this Service Learning activity and the material in this course, including the potential impact on biology, ecology and/or people in our bioregion.  How is biology interdisciplinary?  This reflective essay should be written in one or more paragraphs (7-10 sentence bio (150-200 words) minimum, not including items 1-3).  It should be something that can easily be slightly edited to strengthen a personal statement for an academic program or a job or internship application.

In this service learning program, my group and I started by preparing a bacterial plate, which was similar to what I’ve already learnt from the first biology lab class. The experience was a great opportunity to apply much of the knowledge I’ve learned in my biology coursework, and it provided me with my first foray in fieldwork. This quarter, we learnt about different kinds of animals. All of them, as well as human, can’t get out of water. Once the water gets polluted, animals, especially those wild ones, are easily fall ill. That’s not only because they drink the polluted water directly, but also they eat the plants that irrigated by the water. This is the same truth for human beings; our water source is polluted, the vegetables are not fresh any more, the meat we eat is sick. This scenario represents the biology interdisciplinary that animals could be affected by the environment; environments could be influenced by factories’ pollution, etc. In other words, it’s the interaction between two different fields.

6.      Provide at least 4 questions that were raised based on your service learning activity.

1.      Why this service learning just pointed out two areas, Big Gulch and Japanese Gulch? How about others’?

2.      Are all of our tests accurate enough for providing the data to the relevant department?

3.      Would the data be different on a clear day and a rainy day at the same time period?

4.      What’s the safety range of each part that we tested?

5.      Since this service is limited to the number of people, how we could let more people get to know the importance of protecting water quality.