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Chicago girls take part in Great Lakes E-cology program

Release Date: 04/19/2006
Contact Information: CONTACT: Phillippa Cannon, (312) 353-6218

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No.06-OPA058

CHICAGO (Apr. 19, 2006) Girls from three high schools on Chicago's south side are learning about science and the Great Lakes by exchanging e-mails with Environmental Protection Agency intern Jacqueline Adams while she is onboard EPA's Research Vessel Lake Guardian. Jacqueline is an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education intern in EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago.

For two weeks in April, Jacqueline will be living and working on the floating laboratory, taking samples and testing water from Lakes Erie, Ontario and Superior. Each day, she will send e-mail messages to girls at Maria High School, 6727 S. California, Perspectives Charter School, 1930 S. Archer Ave., and Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago, 2641 Calumet St., about the ship's location and her water chemistry projects. The girls send her questions about her work, the Great Lakes and life on board the research ship.

The students are participants in the Girls E-Mentoring in Science, Engineering and Technology (GEM-SET) program that is designed to connect girls in middle and high schools with women in science, engineering and technology fields. The program is a demonstration project developed by the Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, in partnership with the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois at Chicago.