The Daily Bulletin Archive

By Tony Astran

With help from the College and Community Partnerships Office, Robin Lee Harris found a way to improve the work of and reward Buffalo State graduate students for their efforts to clean Buffalo’s rivers and educate Buffalo Public Schools students.

Harris, an associate professor of earth sciences and science education, understands how valuable the College and Community Partnerships minigrants are. She applied for and received $2,000 in 2007 and successfully reapplied last year. The support has yielded a tremendous return on investment for a program called “Project Riverwatch.”

This program—a collaboration between Buffalo State, the Buffalo Public Schools, Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, and the Buffalo Science Teachers Network (BSTN)—helps aspiring science teachers teach public school students about science while simultaneously beautifying Buffalo’s natural environment each month.

The minigrant was used to purchase water-quality testing kits and also provides a small stipend for Adam Hovey and Ronald Callea, two Buffalo State graduate students who are “captains” during the monthly cleanup projects.

“Adam and Ron are passionate about the environment and teaching science to students, and had been working with Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper on these projects since 2006,” Harris said. “The minigrant provides them with resources to connect even more with the community and help students take an interest and ownership in the environment.”

Hovey, who plans to graduate this fall, is a science teacher at South Park High School. During a recent Saturday morning cleanup project, he, Callea, several Buffalo State teacher candidates, and a few dozen middle school students traveled to the Bailey Peninsula pocket park at the convergence of the Buffalo River and Cazenovia Creek. There they planted 100 trees, painted benches, stenciled signs, removed invasive Japanese knotweed, and replaced railings.

“It’s great to hear a sense of pride from the students,” Hovey said. “I overheard a few say, ‘I hope no one messes with this.’ These out-of-classroom, real-world experiences help students become more interested in learning. They’re making ‘real’ science.”

According to Harris, Project Riverwatch not only helps Buffalo Public Schools students build their science-action portfolios but also provides preservice hours for teacher candidates at Buffalo State.

“Our goal is to reach out to the community and empower children growing up in the city to know what’s going on in their surrounding environment and make a difference,” she said. “The program also is designed to provide leadership opportunities for science teachers and, thus, improve retention.”

“The program helps children become more cooperative and engaged in the classroom,” added Maureen Milligan, a project coordinator for BSTN who works closely with Harris. “The science teacher candidates like the opportunity to interact with students in an informal setting. They also develop lesson plans around the project and provide classroom instruction prior to each cleanup.”

Callea, a science teacher at McKinley High School, agrees that the program has a positive effect on students. “They bring the experiences back to the classroom,” he said. “In my opinion, some students are not as strong with textbook work but can perform physical tasks extremely well. So once class resumes, these students feel much more connected to the academic environment.”

Overall, the partnership has connected more than 20 Buffalo State teacher candidates to various Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper programs and more than 10 Buffalo Public Schools science teachers and their classes. In addition, the two captains have organized multiple shoreline cleanups, replanted hundreds of trees, and conducted numerous water-quality tests for area waterways.

Harris said the College and Community Partnerships minigrant strengthened Project Riverwatch and bettered the lives of hundreds of Buffalo Public Schools students.

“Through this project, the students experience a greater sense of purpose and realize they can make a difference—one trash bag at a time,” she said.