Mentoring Ethnography

This summer has been a learning experience for me.  I have mentored amazing students in my few years at Stout, but this marks my first time working with students on a multi-disciplinary team on overlapping aspects of a complex problem.  Cultural anthropologists, more often than not, work on research alone.  We tend to hold on to the idea of a lone fieldworker individually building rapport and embedding themselves in a community for a long period of time.  This kind of work is extremely valuable, and even indispensable for answering some questions. That model of research also often means that anthropologists get particular kinds of mentoring.  In my case, I had a couple of amazing mentors who helped me understand the issues I was researching and helped me navigate the literature on those topics.  They were also extremely supportive when the inevitable set-backs in ethnographic research arose.  At the same time, like a lot of anthropologists I suspect, fieldwork was somewhat an unknown before I started.  I got more research methods training than some of my colleagues in the discipline, but there was still a tendency to see ethnographic fieldwork as a rite of passage and a research method that must be experienced to really “get.” To borrow Matt’s metaphor and mix it with another, it is was somewhat like getting kicked out of the nest all at once with only a very sketchy map.

The model of research I’m used to and my experience as a mentee mean that mentoring students in this summer was challenging for me.  We only had 8 weeks, and although Zakia and Rachel came in with particular experiences that gave them an “in” for their projects, they were new to the community (as am I, only having lived here 3 years).  I planned activities in the early weeks that, I hoped, would let them learn about the community and practice research skills before they were directly collecting data for the project.  I wanted them to get a sense of the rest of the project, so we all spent time listening to the process of survey creation and analysis. I also tried to strike a balance between letting them control their projects, getting experience without me hovering, and providing guidance and support. 

I’m not sure in the end that I was completely successful.  What I do know is that I have been continually impressed by Zakia and Rachel.  Our projects progressed MUCH faster than I had hoped, and they collected a large amount of data in a short period of time.  It was also fun to see them get excited about the process, become recognized around the community, and be invited to observe various aspects of the policy making/implementation process.  I hope I contributed something to their experience that will be valuable as they continue college and move into their future careers.  I know I learned a lot from working with them.

Keeping track of all your data

It's week seven already! That means our students are collecting their last samples and surveys for a poster session at The Raw Deal in Menomonie this next tuesday. Looking back, between my group and Steve's we went through nearly a 500-count bag of 125 mL plastic Nalgene bottles.

Several hundred bottles, waiting to be acid-washed and put back into service.

Most of these bottles had water samples to test for phosphorus and chlorophyll-a. A single day out in the field might produce 25 or more samples, each of which needs to be run through a series of steps before we can actually measure what we're looking for.

Blake with 53 samples lined up, awaiting phosphorus analysis.

And then there is the data logging equipment - either sondes that you drop over the side of a boat and it records a whole bunch of parameters as you lower it to the bottom, or the pressure/temperature sensors that we've installed in several streams to record changes in stream depth and water temperature. You can record data every few minutes or even every few seconds.

All of this ends up as data. Spreadsheets full of numbers. Numbers from different sensors, numbers from different days, numbers from different sites. It can get confusing. So one of the things we try to stress to the students is the importance of maintaining organized notes, labeling sample containers before you collect the material, even using a shorthand to keep locations and instruments organized.

For this project we have about 15 temperature and pressure loggers in streams around the area. Each of these loggers comes with a serial number, but that's just another number. To keep track of the data loggers, I decided to name them. With 15 data loggers, that gives us 13 dwarfs, a wizard, and a hobbit.

And in a little bit of art-imitating-life, Kili ended up having a bad pressure sensor and was left behind...

Learning to find your own bugs

Last week my wife and I traveled to Rocky Mountain National Park. One of my favorite features of the rockies (besides the in-your-face geology) is a particular bird called the American Dipper, which is known for walking along stream bottoms searching for insects and its eponymous up-and-down bobbing.

The American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus)

Human Development

Wow, I can't believe the summer has progressed this far!  I'm also thrilled with the progress of the fantastic students I'm working with.  Courtney has taken on an enormous amount of responsibility and Peng is a field sampling and lab ANIMAL.  A late comer, Mary, is doing great work as the protocol potentate.  Outstanding!

I'm now in Washington, D.C. at the American Society for Microbiology.  I'm facilitating a workshop that helps faculty design and execute scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) studies.  Once they leave this workshop, these great faculty will return to their campuses across the nation and investigate the impacts of classroom practices on student learning and development.

It's funny, the mentoring approaches I use are the same for both undergraduates and faculty members.  Stay positive, provide room for making mistakes, encourage everyone to work to their full potential, match people's interests with projects, and keep everyone focused on the goal.

The LAKES REU faculty have high aspirations for our students.  You are all so capable and offer such promise for the future.  In every one of you I see the potential to not only have satisfying careers, but to make an impact on the world; to improve it and make it a better place.

Our project is a long-term effort, one that won't be solved this summer or perhaps for a long time.  We made an amazing start on this problem primarily due to your hard work and commitment.  Thank you for all your efforts!

On mentoring: Some sociological ruminations

I always dug Miyagi, of course.  Who didn't?  He created some sort of Zen-like coolness out of waxing the car.  But upon reflection, he kind of had it easy.  He had one person to mentor.  This is not the case for teachers (or other types of mentors out there).  I'm just saying. :)

Sometimes you meet a student who comes in and says, "I have the next three years figured out- I'm so excited!"  Sometimes you hear, "I have no idea what to do with my life; I just really like thinking deeply about stuff."  Then you have the student who is taking care of two kids, works two jobs, and has no time for schoolwork...but really wants a college degree and the ensuing job it (presumably) brings.  Your role as a mentor is to put each of their lives in your hands, as much as possible, and help them make their goals, however vague or improbable they may be, a reality.  No pressure, right? 

I'm loving every one of our LAKES students this summer.  They are all amazing people, but each in their own ways.  We had our first meeting with the LAKES students about six weeks ago.  When I gave my "let's change the world" speech I saw fuzzy warm excitement from some and skeptic eye-rolling from others.  [This was in an environment where every student was motivated to do research.]  I was reminded that even with outstanding students my "mentor" role would be many things, depending on the student and the moment: from cheerleader to facilitator to friend to teacher.  

We all mentor others at many times in our lives.  We want to make that time with them mean something.  We want to make our lives count, for theirs.  How can we do so much for so many different people??  Of course, how we do so is shaped by those who mentored us, and I think our effectiveness depends on the variety of people we globbed onto...  

Is it All a Dream?

After conducting six interviews with policy actors and spending weeks talking to local residents about Lake Menomin, I’m feeling more and more torn. Many people that I’ve spoken to have told me that the lake is unusually clear this season because of the increased rainfall and I know that I did not truly believe that the lake could become so green until I saw a growing patch of algae myself. I look at the lake on beautiful days like the one in this picture and I can’t help but feel a sense of wonder that something so beautiful can become so mucky.

Caution! Water Quality Advisory

As Kyle and I have traveled around the Red Cedar River watershed in the last four weeks one thing keeps resurfacing anytime you get near a lake, river, or even small streams such as Tiffany Creek in Boyceville: "CAUTION! WATER QUALITY ADVISORY". In all caps of course.

It seemed that no matter where we went we couldn't escape the wrath of the blue-green algae and streams with high sediment loads. Until today that is. We spent our day collecting water samples and discharge measurements in just the Wilson Creek watershed that empties directly into Lake Menomin. Following Wilson Creek and its many tributaries as close to their headwaters as we could collecting samples that will be analyzed for concentration of both soluble reactive phosphorus and total phosphorus along the way to determine primary sources in the watershed. And along the way we found some beautiful streams with perfectly clean water and other small streams chalked with sediment.

Time to run the samples and do the route again in a week or two and look for patterns throughout the Wilson Creek Watershed.

Blake Lea