June 7, 2000
STEP institute introduces Quinault students to fisheries, forestry research
A collaboration between the University of Washington, the Quinault Indian Nation and the Taholah School District is helping students take the first step toward college and a career in natural resources.
The Sciences and Tribes Educational Partnership (STEP) ? based in the UW?s College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences and the College of Forest Resources ? will hold its first summer institute June 7-30. The institute caps the pilot year of a Washington Sea Grant-funded program that placed 10 Taholah students in a science-based work-study program during the spring quarter and propelled one student, Amber Pickett, to the UW on a Gates Foundation scholarship.
?Participating in STEP helped me get to the UW because I made connections on campus. It also helped me get real-world experience and to know what field was right for me,? said Pickett, a Gates Foundation scholarship winner who will study fishery science at the UW beginning next fall.
The summer institute is the next step in the effort to send more American Indian students, like Pickett, to the UW. Eight Taholah students will travel from their homes on the western coast of the Olympic Peninsula to conduct research June 7-12 at the UW?s Big Beef Creek Research Center in Seabeck. They?ll be at the UW?s Pack Forest Research Center near Mount Rainier June 13-18 and they?ll return to the UW campus June 19-30.
While in Seabeck the students will don snorkeling gear, get into the water and create the first map of Big Beef Creek. ?It?s groundbreaking science,? Nan Little, the STEP program manager, said. ?Big Beef Creek has never been mapped before.?
Then students will troll Hood Canal to finish the mapping project and develop a better understanding of the underwater environment. They?ll also learn about shellfish and beach ecology and conduct microscopic investigations of fish from the river.
While at the Pack Forest Research Center students will learn about orienteering and how to study river environments. They will also spend time in a commercial forest and at a forest products plant. Finally, the group will hike to the headwaters of the Nisqually River and learn about measuring stream flow.
After returning to Seattle, students will organize and analyze the data collected during their fieldwork. The institute will culminate in a presentation of the group?s findings. Among the guests at the presentation will be students? friends and family from the Quinault Nation.
Little expects the program to expand and to have continued success. She said partnering with the Quinault community was crucial to developing a program that will work over the long haul.
When designing STEP, Little asked Quinault leaders what sort of program would interest them. They suggested the work-study aspect, which eight students recently completed. Community leaders said work study ? which included two days per week of paid work in a hatchery on the Quinault reservation, while going to school full time ? would show students that they could earn money and not have to depend on the government or the tribe. Additionally, it gave them real-world applications for the science and math they were studying in school.
So far the plan seems to be working. Students have been participating in STEP for just more than four months and already Pickett, who participated in the work-study aspect of the program, is bound for the UW on scholarship. That result is encouraging to Little. ?She would not be at the University of Washington, she would not be on scholarship if it weren?t for this program.?
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For more information, contact Little at (206) 321-0200 or (206) 616-6255 or klittle@u.washington.edu.
