by Kate Pound, past-President MGWA
The Minnesota Groundwater Association Foundation helped fund two student internships at Freshwater over the summer of 2021 with Freshwater Research and Policy Director Carrie Jennings. The purpose of this internship was to give young students from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to explore the field of groundwater research and conservation and to increase awareness of potential career paths. These internships were awarded to two high school students, Cisliams Vang (Lala) and Winner Soe. Lala is a senior at Johnson High School who enjoys STEM classes, and Winner is a sophomore at Humboldt High School with an interest in pursuing a career in the environmental sciences.
One of the goals of this internship was to introduce students to concepts of groundwater in an area that they are familiar with. They would then learn the history of the area, connect groundwater professionals, and then summarize their understanding in a community outreach project. During their 10-week internship, Winner and Lala learned about groundwater in an area of interest and developed local expertise. They got to go on field and lab visits and meet with groundwater professionals, including two BIPOC mentors. They created presentations about their internship experience that have been recorded in both English and their parent’s language, Hmong and Korean.
Lala’s main project during this internship was learning more about her grandmother’s well water and septic system. She was living in Afton for most of the summer with her grandmother, and one of the first things that she noticed was that well water tasted very different from St. Paul water. Winner’s main project was focused on learning about Lake Phalen, the history of the lake and its watershed. He spent some time using MnTopo to learn about the connection between Lake Phalen, the springs in Swede Hollow and the Mississippi River.
Despite some challenges associated with the pandemic, they were able to go on several project-related visits. Winner took water samples at Lake Phalen and sampled springs at Swede Hollow, and Lala sampled her grandmother’s well and a neighbor’s well in Afton. Then they went to Scott Alexander’s lab at the University of Minnesota to process these samples. Thanks to Joy Loughry, they also went to a monitoring station in the Vermillion River watershed and learned about base flow when cold water was all that there was in the stream owing to the drought. They canoed on Lake Phalen, Lake St. Croix and Como Lake. Winner got really into canoeing through these experiences and tried out his portaging skills at Lake Phalen. Lala got a personalized tour of Macalester College, courtesy of Prof. Kelly McGregor and Geology major, Sun Tun. The experience culminated with a Freshwater all-staff tour of the St. Paul Drinking Water Plant.
Some of the new groundwater-related skills that they learned were map reading (thanks to Kate Pound), understanding a well log, reading a landscape, lake levels as an expression of the water table, and surface water-groundwater interaction. Lala learned about contaminant plumes, and both brushed up on general water chemistry, courtesy of Scott (hardness, pH, conductivity, isotopes, dissolved constituents) and how these can aid in groundwater studies. During their tour at the St. Paul Drinking Water Plant, they learned about the connection between drinking water and public health.
Funding this internship was an actionable strategy aimed at alleviating the disparities in our groundwater community. MGWA acknowledges that racism is manifested in the groundwater community and our organization by the limited representation of BIPOC professionals. Creating paid internship opportunities and scholarships for underrepresented students who may be interested in the geosciences is one of the goals of our DEI committee.
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee
Kate Pound, Kara Dennis, John McDaris, Julia Steenberg, and Tony Runkel
Please contact any one of us if you are interested in being involved in the committee – or want to support our work in any other way. To see more go to: https://freshwater.org/2021/10/26/winner-lala/
MGWA is committed to developing a just, equitable, and inclusive groundwater community. Click on the button below to read MGWA’s full diversity statement.