Alumni, Alumni Spotlight

Alumni Spotlight: Liza Morse (F’09)

Fall 2009 alumna and Grinnell College sophomore, Liza Morse, has been a leader affecting change both in classes as a biology and Spanish major, and in her extra-curricular activities. As a first year at Grinnell last year year she received a stipend for being the on-campus advocate for the organization Food & Water Watch. She also was elected Chairperson of the Student Environmental Committee for this year. In addition, this past summer she worked for the American Bird Conservancy in Washington, DC.

As part of Food and Water Watch, Liza acted as the Campus Coordinator for their Take Back the Tap Campaign, which aims to eliminate bottled water from campuses and encourage reusable water bottles, as well as to educate the student body regarding water issues (water privatization, fracking, etc.). You can read more about the campaign here!

As the Chair of the Student Environmental Committee this year, Liza has been running weekly meetings where the committee plans on-campus events for students and Continue reading →

Deep Creek Middle School

Week 3 of Community Outreach

On Monday September 24th the entire student body of DCMS eagerly ran to the vans parked outside, in excitement for their weekly buddy visit with The Island School students. Together, The Island School students and DCMS students work on a service project for the community. The grade 8 DCMS class and their buddies are focusing on supporting a health initiative by local non-profit One Eleuthera. They are helping One Eleuthera design and conduct educational outreach for the organizations healthy eating and health gardens initiative.  This week the group learned about compost so that they could serve as the experts in later outreach events.

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Experts at The Island School were interviewed by the students and provided excellent insight into each projects focus.  The grade 8’s started by working with Joseph, who brought students to “compost land” Continue reading →

Student Update

Student Update October 2, 2012

I’m a big fan of Mondays. From sunrise to sunset they’re full of productive, exciting, adventurous, inspiring memories. At my sending school, Mondays would be full of groans and complaints because it was no longer the weekend; not here. Yesterday we started out with a choice between yoga and soccer for morning exercise. Feeling very tight and slightly stressed because I had zero clue what was going on in Omeros, I chose yoga. It was so refreshing and I felt 100% better afterwards. I remember looking around the room yesterday while we were all trying our hardest to a seemingly impossible position called “crow,” laughing with each other, encouraging each other, and realizing how close we have got over the past month. Continue reading →

Alumni, News

Love is in the Air!

This past weekend, two couples near and dear to The Island School’s heart tied the knot! Francesca Forrestal, a Fall 1999 alumna and member of the Cape Eleuthera Foundation Board, married Ian Enochs in Newport, RI. They are living in Miami, Florida where Francesca is completing her Ph.D. in marine biology and Ian is working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Also married last weekend were former Island School faculty member, Kristin Sinclair, to Andy Robertson. The two got married  at Camp Wing in Duxbury, MA, a camp that  “inspires at-risk youth to develop their innate potential to become members of the next generation of diverse young leaders in Boston and Massachusetts, breaking the cycle of poverty and under-achievement and yielding systemic change in the communities where they live”. Their wedding venue expenses helped to support these programs and provide scholarships for kids. Kristin and Andy were able to tie a little bit of Island School into their ceremony by decorating with shells and seaglass from Eleuthera and sand from Lighthouse Beach.

Congratulations Francesca & Ian and Kristin & Andy!

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Events

Women Working for Oceans Event

Women Working for Oceans (W2O) is an organization started by a group of women near the Boston area, including Island School alumni parents Linda Cabot (parent of SP’11) and Kirsten Dawson (parent of F’04, F’06, and F’08), who are concerned about the health of the planet’s oceans and want to do something about it. The mission of W2O is to inform individuals about the challenges facing oceans and inspire action to ensure a healthy, sustainable blue planet for tomorrow. W20 works in partnership with the New England Aquarium, a global leader in marine education and conservation.

Join them for their upcoming event at the New England Aquarium on October 23!

For more information about W20, please visit their website: www.womenworkingforoceans.org, or visit them on Facebook. Please come join them, get involved, and help build a wave of action for change to help protect our oceans!

Student Update

Student Update October 1, 2012

This past Saturday was one of my favorite memories since I’ve been here. After a pretty strenuous hour and a half long run for me, our first long morning exercise with our tracks, we had our final Settlement Day. Usually we head to our assigned houses/areas in the afternoon, but because this was our last one, we got to leave at 9:15 and stay the whole day! While some students grew weary of  7 hours exploring settlements, Lexi, Cate, Brian, Tom and I spent the day a woman named Toya Carey, one of the most, if not the most hospitable, kind, and generous person I have ever met. Our day included meaningful conversations about her family and her community, baking lemon pound cake and strawberry cheesecake from her mother’s top secret recipe, and ordering grouper fingers and fried conch from her favorite local restaurant. Despite the difference of age and background, we all got along so well and had such a wonderful time. When John came to pick us up at 4 for the cook out, there was an unspoken but obvious sadness about saying goodbye – so we didn’t. We decided that there was no way we could take the pound cake to the cook out, and the cheesecake wasn’t completely ready, so we planned to swing by to say bye and pick up the cakes afterwards.

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Cape Eleuthera Institute, research

Conche Diem!

Our research group is determining the population density of Queen Conch (pronounced “conk”) in South Eleuthera. Specifically, we are seeing if there is enough conch in the area for reproduction, since they are density-dependant. Conch is very economically, ecologically and culturally important in the Bahamas. Conch populations are declining because of overfishing and high demands for the meat in the United States. We are excited to take part in the research and we hope to help in the creation of a Marine Protected Area. Today we went out into the field and completed multiple 1,000 meter transects by towing two snorkelers at a time behind a boat while counting adult, subadult and juvenile conch. Alongside the conch we saw cushion sea stars, lobster, moon jellyfish and a large assortment of colorful fish! Honk if you love conch!
- Connor, Brian, Christina, Eunna, Nora & Maren
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Cape Eleuthera Institute, CEI

Culturing Penshells at the Cape Eleuthera Institute

Two weeks ago the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) harvested over one hundred black penshells from a beautiful beach at Ten Bay, located near Palmetto Point. Penshells are a kind of scallop, and we aim to culture them here at CEI for a of couple reasons. As filter feeders, penshells thrive in water with higher nutrients, using the nutrients to grow and as a result clean the surrounding water. Currently, we have our collected penshells in two separate groups: one group in the wet lab in a flow through tank, and another group in a small cage about 100m off the beach where our main pump intake is. In the lab, we feed the penshells concentrated microalgae, whereas the group out in the ocean does not get fed. We are monitoring both groups daily, by recording temperature, dissolved oxygen and salinity.

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Once both groups are acclimated and showing good growth rates, we are going to attempt to breed them and raise penshells into maturity. We plan on putting the resulting stock in the mangrove Continue reading →

Student Update

Student Update September 28, 2012

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Good morning family and friends of the Island School! Due to a special and unique experience that occurred Wednesday morning, chores haven’t been done since Tuesday. Thus, no blog. I left off Tuesday, a day full of classes, meals, and the first research day of the week. Although Tuesdays may be one of the most “average” days of the week here at The Island School, they always seem to be full of excitement because that’s when we’re introduced to the exciting things that we’ll be doing in the latter part of the week. For example, in Human Ecology, we got an introduction to Thursday’s class; cooking a meal made from local foods from a local farmer, that we would prepare and serve for the whole island school community. Tuesdays are also Community Meeting days, where we talk about subject regarding the community. This week we explored and discussed our different leadership styles.

On Wednesday morning, the students and staff got an opportunity that few, especially for most of us, will ever get to experience. Continue reading →