High school educators join cruise on the R/V Savannah

Invited by UGA scientists Adam Greer and Marc Frischer, Johnson High School (Chatham County) principal Derrick Muhammad and four JHS educators spent just over 24 hours onboard the R/V Savannah several dozen miles off the Georgia coast, learning about the process of collecting oceanographic data with the ultimate goal of relaying insights back to their students and using their experience to develop future lesson plans:

“For the UGA Skidaway Institute of Oceanography to partner with Johnson High School has been a blessing,” said Dr. Muhammad. “We are very energized to take this information back to our students at Johnson to get them excited.”

Both parties foresee the partnership growing. 

“Through our conversations with the teachers, we definitely could see new ideas percolating about how these experiences and data we collected could be incorporated into science curricula,” added Dr. Greer, the chief scientist on the cruise.

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Once the new school year starts in August, all of these details will be shared with students in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program at JHS. Both the JHS educators and the SkIO scientists look forward to growing the partnership and developing more hands-on opportunities for students. 

“My team and I took away a better understanding of what it is that this team at SkIO is trying to accomplish and the importance of this sort of work,” said Amanda Fanelli, coordinator of the IB Program at JHS. “When it comes to food webs and the changing environment, it is essential that we learn and study this.”

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Image: Principal Muhammad (left) helps SkIO scientists hoist the image capturing device into the water. (Photo by Jackson K. Schroeder)