Kevin is an ecologist. Here are his responses to some questions:
A brief description of what you are currently working on.
I study how climate affects the geographic distributions of subalpine and alpine meadows at Mount Rainier National Park.
Do you have an idea(s) on what seventh graders could do as far as field work on Mt. Rainier?
One project that comes to mind is counting the number of seedlings per unit area on nurse logs and the forest floor and comparing these values to see if nurse logs improve seedling germination or not. This would emphasize the importance of environmental variables (moisture, light) for organism performance, how organisms can change the environment and how organisms interact. It should also be relatively simple and feasible, though controlling for area might complicate things too much.
What inspired you to get into science in the first place? What do you like about science?
I really enjoyed hiking and camping and being out in nature, so I wanted to study it. What I like about science is that you get to think about big ideas and issues, like how climate change will affect biodiversity, and then you get to actually do research on a small part of that and help answer questions. And a lot of the research and data analysis process is about problem solving, which I like.
What advice do you have for a middle school student who is interested in becoming a scientist?
Explore lots of different kinds of scientific fields (physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, etc.) to see what interests you the most. Read a variety of things about science, read as much as you can, and have fun with it.
But no matter what field of science you end up going into, if you do become a scientist, there are basic skills that you will need to master that you can start working on now in middle school. One is math. Being good at math and statistics will be a requirement for many fields of science, or at the lest give a leg up. Another is writing. Science is all about discovering and communicating knowledge, and if you can't write well, you won't be able to clearly and effectively communicate that knowledge you've worked so hard to achieve. A third big one is computers. Nowadays, technology plays a huge role in research, and scientists need to be able to write computer programs to collect and analyze data. Taking a computer science class in middle or high school and learning how to write computer code will give help give you a solid background for doing science.
And let's say you don't end up going into science. If you've become good at math, writing and computing, you will have a lot of opportunities available to you in business, engineering and a lot of other careers in addition to science. So nurturing these skills will be time well spent.