Costa Rica Update
Our speaker on January 22nd was a familiar figure at our meetings; this is his third visit as speaker. John Doleman last visited our club at the recap meeting where the kids involved in the Costa Rica Tree Ant Study made their report on the project. His prior visit was a year earlier when he first presented the project to us.
As you’ll recall, John was a very high-level project manager with NASA, when he noticed that all of the engineers that he was working with were from other countries; only 4% of them were Americans. A bit of research caused him to realize that American students weren’t becoming engineers. He started to work on getting students interested in the sciences. One of the ideas was the science experience with PhD’s in Costa Rica.
This visit was partially a recap of results of the student trips – 75% of the kids who participated in the study are now in college majoring in the science fields – and to present a couple of new focuses
As a side effort during the study, the students spent part of their extra time attaching radio locator devices to sea turtles that swim in to the area for nesting. These turtles come ashore within a few yards of the same place each time they return over their lifetimes. Biologists have many questions about the turtles that they want answered, and these animals may be another project for high school students to help in.