Alumni

Alumni in NYC Give Back After Hurricane Sandy

This past weekend, Island School alumni in the New York City area Kate Gibson (F’04) and Molly Lawson (F’00) gathered a group of their friends to volunteer with the Sandy relief efforts. They were put straight to work and spent the day delivering food and supplies to victims displaced by Sandy in Brookyln and the Rockaways. Kate admitted that seeing the devastation first hand was “a huge reality check but it feels great to be on the ground and helping out in the community.” Way to go, guys! You are doing The Island School proud!

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Student Update

Student Update November 12, 2012

On Saturday morning, we woke up to get to circle a half hour early, at six, for our long exercise.  Most of the kids on run track ran around 10 miles into deep creek, and swim track rode our bikes to the other side of the cape to swim the last part of our super swim.  We jumped off the rock and into the water, and were greeted by a wall of  jellyfish, albeit a harmless species.  It reminded me of the scene in Finding Nemo, where Dori and Marlin have to bounce across the field of jellyfish.  We were able to get through the jellyfish with minimal stinging, and swim back and forth between High Rock, and Chub Point a couple times.  Now that we have swum all of the parts of the course, I am feeling a more confident about the super-swim.  We got back to campus for classes, and everyone was bundled up in jackets and sweatshirts for the morning, complaining about how cold it was.  When we got to our literature class, we checked the temperature, and it was 71 degrees.  It was amazing to see how we had all acclimated to the heat here, which is going to make arriving home to winter difficult.  It will also be hard to go home and not have the same daily routine as we do here, as we will still be used to living with 45 other students, having structured meal times at everyday, and study hours every night.  For our Saturday night activity, everyone was exhausted from long exercise, so we had a fort building contest in the Pres. Room, and then watched Harry Potter, but a lot of students went to sleep early because we could barely keep our eyes open.

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Yesterday, on our day off, a group of students went with Maxey back to High Rock, where we moved rocks under water to get them to form IS F ’12. Continue reading →

research

Lionfish Research Project Update

The show goes on for team LIONFISH!

Hurricane Sandy might have stopped our field work, but we prevailed in the lab. We took this time out of the water to dissect a lionfish not only for our data collection but as a live presentation to another two research team including Conch and Patch Reefs. This fish was particularly exciting to us for what we found in its stomach. Most lionfish we dissect usually have low stomach content. However, this was not the case. This gluttonous fish had consumed approximately seven fish: three French grunts, three tomtates and one overly-digested and unidentifiable fish, all juveniles. It was exciting for us to show other research groups a few things of what we’ve been doing over the course of this semester.

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research, Student Update

Student Update November 9, 2012

We have been spending a lot of time doing work on our research projects these past few days, getting ready for the presentation Parents’ Weekend, and the Research Symposium.  My research group, Climate Change, spent our class yesterday preparing for presentations that we are giving this afternoon to other students, and teachers.  The last presentation that we gave was only our project introductions, but now we are presenting about our whole project, so these presentations definitely cover a lot more ground.  In climate change, we have been studying the effects that rising temperatures and acidity have on tropical flats fishes, and to do this, we have been doing a lot of work in the lab, with a shuttlebox.  A shuttlebox is two tanks, about the size of a baby pool, connected by a shuttle.  We change the lower the pH in one tank, observing at what point fish will leave the environment that they are used to, to go to an environment that is more suitable for them, having a lower pH.  While we are in the lab, it can be stressful Continue reading →

Alumni

Have One On Us!

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This week, Island School alumni 21 and older gathered in various cities across the US and Bahamas to “Have One On Us”! These events were hosted by the members of the Alumni Advisory Board in an effort to establish stronger regional alumni groups by reconnecting with old friends and getting to know one another, as well as promote CONCHtribution. The first one was in Boston on Wednesday night. Despite the snow and cold weather, 17 alumni, ranging from Fall 1999 to Spring 2006, weathered the storm, in true Island School fashion, to meet up and establish some cross-semester relationships in the region.

On Thursday evening, members of the Alumni Advisory Board hosted events in Denver, San Francisco, and Nassau! These are relatively uncharted territories for Island School alumni events so it was very exciting to have such successful events in each of those locations. Continue reading →

Student Update

Student Update November 08, 2012

Over the past few days on campus, everyone has been really excited to get started on our Human Ecology final projects. We had our first meeting on Monday morning to talk about issues around campus, Eleuthera, and back home, which could use improvement.  After discussion, we found other people who had similar interest, and then talked about potential solutions.  My group, which also includes Maren and Remington, is trying to come up with a way that students can wash some of our own more urgent laundry on campus (exercise clothes, stains, etc.) without taking away business from the local business that washes our laundry every week.  It has been interesting to listen to the other projects that students have in mind, and exciting to see ways that the impact of our community is going to be improved!

After Human Eco on Monday, we went to DCMS for Community Outreach. Continue reading →

Uncategorized

Biodigestion in Action

Over the course of the last several weeks, Island School students spent time kayaking, experienced a hurricane, explored the majority of the island, and additionally, were able to gain intimate knowledge of many of the systems that make the campus run. Most notably, aquaponics, aquaculture, permaculture, and biodigestion were featured as Human Ecology modules during the kayak rotation. During the students’ time learning about biodigestion, they were asked to take a look at the ways Island School falls short of its goals of self sustainability and try to find some solutions. In doing so, students’ learned about the systems that support human life on campus, where waste comes from, how humans get energy, and how we can improve as a community. The focus of their work was mainly turning waste to energy, which led to some hands on work with the biodigestion system. Students learned about the anaerobic process, how biodigestion mimics natural systems, how renewable energy is generated by microbes, and eventually how to put that energy to use. After dinner circle on Wednesday, students ventured to the biodigester to check out some of the applications of biogas. They observed running the gas through a conventional burner system and explored possibilities for how this campus system could develop into the future. [slideshow]

Alumni

Rob Neely (SP’99) Visits Campus

John Schatz, Rob Neely (SP'99), Shanti Nulu
John Schatz, Rob Neely (SP’99), Shanti Nulu

Rob Neely, a student during the pioneer semester of The Island School, as well as a faculty member Fall 2003-Spring 2004 visited campus last week with his fiancé, Shanti Nulu. During his visit, he had the opportunity to make a presentation to the Fall 2012 students, showing them photos of what campus looked like back in Spring 1999 and sharing stories of his experience more than 10 years ago. In addition to kicking back and enjoying his vacation, Rob got to interact with the current students at meals and reunite with John Schatz with whom he worked during his year as a teacher. It was great to have you back, Rob!