Gannon University Dean Sets Sail to Share Knowledge Along the Great Lakes
Posted: June 9, 2014This summer, Steven Mauro, Ph.D., dean of Gannon University's
Morosky Health Professions and Sciences, will be teaching two
shipboard classes: on the U.S. Brig Niagara in June, and as lead
researcher on the R/V Lake Guardian, a 180-foot-long research
vessel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the following
month.
Mauro will be teaching on the first five days of a three-week
voyage that will take Niagara from its homeport in Erie to Duluth,
Minn., sailing Lakes Erie, Huron and Superior. Students on Niagara
will be enrolled in a three-credit biology course entitled
Microbial Ecology: Great Lakes Environmental Science. Subjects
explored in the course include lake ecology, the effect of micro
plastic debris, microbiology, marine archaeology and the history
and ecology of the Great Lakes. In addition to their academic
activities, the students will learn traditional seamanship on a
square-rigged sailing ship.
In July, Mauro will once again take to the lake to lead a team
of 15 high school science teachers in a shipboard science workshop.
Mauro will instruct the teachers in laboratory procedures
associated with measuring water quality in a week-long workshop
that will take the Lake Guardian from the Great Lakes Science
Center in Cleveland to Erie and then to Put-In-Bay, Ohio.
Dean Mauro's summer teaching initiatives are just one more
example of why Gannon University and their experts in the marine
biology field are proud to announce the addition of the freshwater
and marine biology Major in Fall of 2015. The new program in
freshwater and marine biology complements existing Gannon
University majors in biology and environmental science/engineering.
The program will require a minimum of 19 credits in such courses as
Aquatic Microbiology, Aquatic Toxicology and Tropical Marine
Biology, a course taught in the Bahamas. Mauro said that there are
approximately 60 aquatic science programs in the U.S., very few of
which specialize in freshwater biology.
The Lake Guardian workshop is supported facilitated by
Pennsylvania Sea Grant, which is a joint effort a partnership
between Penn State University, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and is
part of the National Sea Grant College Network, which sponsors
research, education, training, and outreach projects to foster
science-based decisions about the use and conservation of coastal
resources. The Environmental Protection Agency supports this
collaboration between researchers and educators by covering all of
the ship's operating costs for the cruise.
More information about the Lake Guardian workshop is available
here.