Storm Water Environmental Education Program (SWEEP)
Neighborhood Involvement SWEEPs Rhodes Students Away
As a first-year student, Elza Crocco ’07 got involved in the Storm Water Environmental Education Project (SWEEP), a lane of the Learning Corridor that pairs Rhodes geology students with budding scientists at Cypress Middle School. “My involvement in SWEEP extended beyond just the learning about science to the learning about people,” Crocco says.
Indeed it did. While the Cypress students were on campus to participate in the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Symposium she invited them to “hang out” in her dorm room. In return, she was invited to address the Honors students in a symposium at Cypress.
“This program has gone beyond my greatest hopes in forging relationships between the college and our neighbors,” says Professor Carol Ekstrom, director of the program. “It is also important to our students’ education.”
The students agree. Tatiana Cerna ’07 says, “I had a hard time understanding topographic maps until I had to explain them to somebody else. Working with my student allowed me not only to help someone else learn, it helped me to think through and better understand the concept.”
SWEEP sessions begin with refreshments immediately after classes end at Cypress at 2:15. “Then we get them involved in a hands-on project,” Ekstrom says.
Activities include sampling and testing water from various places. Students build models of the Memphis storm drainage system and make posters for Earth Day, which they spend at Lichterman Nature Center. After the Cypress homecoming football game, which is played at Rhodes , the students pick up trash, analyz it, graph it, and project the likelihood that it might end up in storm water drainage.
Both the Cypress and Rhodes participants give the program high marks. The middle schoolers vote with their feet, returning year after year. Rhodes student Rachel Hays ’06 says, “Becoming actively involved in education teaches students about the importance of what they are learning rather than just giving them facts.” Lucie Watkins ’05 echoes, “The SWEEP program definitely opened my eyes to new and exciting facts concerning the environment.”
Ekstrom concludes, “I think it gives the students a better concept of how complex environmental issues can be, that there are people impacted by almost everything.”
