We Bid Fond Farewells … And Bright New Careers!
As another summer comes to an end, we shed a few tears and wish all the best to our departing staff, Field Investigator, Emi McGeady (center), and Water Quality Coordinator, Mackenzie Miller (left).
Mackenzie, Emi, Kathryn
Emi, with an environmental sciences degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, joined us as Field Investigator as part of the Chesapeake Conservation Corps to give recent college grads hands-on science experiences.
In this capacity, Emi’s first priority was to run our water quality monitoring program and ensure that it was the data-driven program meeting all the protocol standars set by the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative.
Then, after we completed our WQ tours, it was Emi who managed all the data inputting chores.
She then manipulated the data to create a variety of charts and graphs that we use to tell the story about our river and upload all our data to the sharing platform, Chesapeake Data Explorer.
Emi & healthy oysters from Traces Hollow reef.
Emi also wrote our series of creek-by-creek water quality reports, piloted our drone, supported our Floating Classroom, organized our first GEMS Expedition hike and supported oyster restoration work by testing underwater photo array to check on our oyster reefs and created and ran our scientific oyster dive program (see pic at right).
Over the years, Mackenzie not only organized our weekly water quality tours, she was instrumental in creating our first reports on water quality, organizing and imputing data and creating charts and maps of our ever-present dead zone.
Mackenzie now heads off to complete her graduate degree at Duquesne.
Kathryn with WQ Crew: Eric, Glen, Rusty
SRA also celebrated the continuing contributions that our friend, Kathryn Von Rueden.
As we built our river-wide program over the years, it was Kathryn who gave us a tremendous jump start. Kathryn was instrumental in recruiting boat captains and volunteers to join our water quality monitoring tours from her home base in Sherwood Forest.
And, to make sure they never lose their way on the river, they now have handy wall charts of the Severn River that include all the names of the creeks in the watershed.