Monday & Tuesday
After getting some rest over the weekend, IE students start their week by working on individual research projects (ENEC 395). We have six different research projects studying salamanders, bats, owls, hemlocks, and macroplastics this semester-if you want to learn more about our research projects, follow us on Instagram and Twitter @highlandsie21-. As we approach the end of the semester, we are working on finishing our papers, which has been somewhat challenging as it is the first time for many of us are writing a scientific paper. Fortunately, we have the support and guidance of our professors Jason Love and Rada Petric, as well as that of our mentors. This past Tuesday we had to turn in the first draft of our research paper, so both Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to collecting sources, learning to code with R to analyze our data, creating maps, and more. After spending hours in front of a screen, some of us went on a walk to Sunset Rock-which is just about a mile away from our house.
Wednesday
On a regular Wednesday, we start our day with our Human Impacts class (ENEC 256) which goes from 9a to 1p. We get a lunch break after class, which somedays is chaotic with 12 people fixing lunch in a not-so-big kitchen. At 3p, our Cultural History class (ENEC 204) starts. It is a seminar-based class where we learn about the history of the southern Appalachian region.
However, this Wednesday was not particularly like others. We got to meet Kyle Pursel from the Highlands-Cashiers land trust, who talked to us about habitat restoration and took us to visit the wetland project they have been working on, focusing on the native Appalachian Turtlehead plant that has been decimated by deer. After this lecture, we went to the Highlands Aereal park where we had a fun time zip lining through the forest. Later that day for the owls and bats research projects we went mist-netting from 6 to 10p in Highlands. Unfortunately, we did not find any bats, but we were lucky to catch a Northern Saw-whet Owl that we got to band and take measurements to assess her health.
Thursday
We are getting close to the end of the week, once again. Sometimes weeks fly by and we do not notice it. On Thursday mornings we go to Remote Sensing class (ENEC 479) and we are currently working on creating a story map about hemlocks at the Highlands Biological Station. Hemlocks are being decimated by the invasive woolly adelgid and we want to bring more awareness to this issue. The story map is coming together and you all will be able to see it very soon. Later that day, we had Writing Class (ENEC 264) with John Lane and Brent Martin. Over the last few months, we have learned about different ways to communicate scientific knowledge and in the past weeks, we have been working on writing poems. If you are interested in seeing some of the work we have done in this class we will be presenting some of our pieces at the Hudson Library on December 9th.
Friday
TGIF! Last day of classes but also one of the longest days of the week. On Friday, we work on our Capstone project from 9a to 4p along with professor Jason Love and Dr. Jerry Miller from Western Carolina University. Earlier in our blog, we posted about our capstone project on microplastics, so check that out if you want to know more details about it. We have completed data collection and we are finishing sample analysis and we are writing our final paper. We have had many challenges in our research since the methodology for studying microplastics is still in development, but we continue to do the best we can with what we got.
