E.S.S.R.E.

Welcome To the E.S.S.R.E. Website

Launched in July 2001, the Environmental Science Summer Research Experience for Young Women is a three-week summer internship in environmental field studies for students in grades 9-12 from the greater Baltimore area.  Participants explore the soil chemistry and biota of the Roland Park Country School campus, author a scientific paper and perform lab activities to study soil micro-environments, and adapt these experiments for dissemination and use in a wide variety of educational situations and socio-economic conditions. The program's primary objectives are to give this target audience the opportunity to engage in authentic, self-directed primary research into the ecological roles of soil microbes and, as a result, to nurture their interest in science in general as a possible career option. 

Over the years, E.S.S.R.E. has received national recognition for our efforts to promote the study of soil ecology,  including the 2006 SeaWorld/Busch Gardens/Fuji Film Environmental Excellence Award and inclusion in the monograph, Exemplary Science for Resolving Societal Challenges by the National Science Teachers Association.  Former interns have gone on to work at national research centers such as the University of Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology, the Spinal Cord Injury Center at the Palo Alto VA Hospital, MITRE’s Nanosystems Group, and the Johns Hopkins Space Telescope Science Institute. Many graduates of the program have pursued careers in science, earning significant scholarships including the Ethyl and Albemarle Science Scholarship from the University of Richmond, the Meyerhoff Scholarship from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, the National Science Foundation's STEP program at Dickinson College, the John P. McNulty Scholars Program at St. Joseph University, and the Johnson Scholarship at Washington and Lee University. A lab manual based on the girls' work was published in 2008, and several past interns still earn royalties for ideas they developed out of their work in the program. 

The original ESSRE site used from 2001 to 2019 can be found here. All past and current ESSRE data and papers can be accessed from the tabs above. A compiled spreadsheet of all of the data from 2010-present can also be found here.

Program Description

Run in conjunction with the RPCS ninth grade soil ecology project, The Little Things that Run the World, E.S.S.R.E. offers adolescent girls a unique and challenging educational opportunity and provides educators around the country with labs and soil ecology lessons to help implement the Next Generation Science Standards in their classrooms and courses. Participants in E.S.S.R.E. engage in a wide variety of activities during their internships. Depending on the prior skills and backgrounds of those involved, these can and have included:

• performing a broad general survey of the biotic and abiotic  factors located within the urban woodland on the school's campus using standard biodiversity protocols;

• generating a baseline of data for studying soil microbes and their environmental conditions from this survey;

• using the baseline data to design, and perform experimental investigations into one specific aspect of soil microecology of the participants' own choosing;

• developing these investigations into inquiry lesson plans and the requisite support materials for use in other classrooms; and

• modifying and verifying both the research protocols and the lesson plans to make them easily accessible to all schools, regardless of their physical or economic situation (including urban schools, schools with inadequate funding, and schools that teach populations of students traditionally under-represented in science).  

In addition, interns customize and prepare their experiments, activities, lessons, and data for dispersion to the wider science education community via the Internet, and each research team must create its own web page to make available to other schools, teachers, and pupils all the classroom materials produced through this program, along with the database of information collected from the initial survey as well.

Finally, everyone involved with this project learns various general science research skills, including specifically (but not limited to):

• performing advanced statistical analysis (including student t-test & regression analysis)

• writing a scientific paper 

• maintaining a field research journal

• generating and preparing an annotated bibliography.

For their participation in the program, all students are paid a small stipend.

Applications

We are not currently accepting applications.  

Visit our applications page to view further information regarding the internship and applications.

Click here for the latest E.S.S.R.E. summer data!

If you have any comments or questions, contact Rob Morgante at MorganteR@rpcs.org