Summer interns make waves in Steuben County water quality monitoring

Thanks to Samuel Drerup, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, two Trine students had the pleasure of interning in Steuben County this past summer monitoring water quality.

“Learning more about and exploring Steuben County was a very rewarding experience I enjoyed a lot,” intern Ava McCall said.

Ava, a biology major, and Stephen Noj-Orellana, a forensic science major, both spent their summers monitoring water quality across 18 different sites in the county.

“The goal was to see how different substances in the sites were changing over the course of the summer as well as testing different places along the same stream to determine if something was happening to it between those two points,” Stephen explained.

Diving into water quality monitoring

Ava and Stephen shared responsibilities by going to different sites together three days each week. At each site, the pair measured the width and depth of the stream at 10 different locations spread evenly throughout the stream. They bottled samples of the water to test at Sandhill Environmental, filtered the water and gathered water chemistry data using a probing instrument called a sonde.

“The sonde measured a variety of things such as turbidity, water temperature, pH and more,” Stephen elaborated. “At the end of every day, we would take two small bottles that we had gathered water samples in over to Sandhill Environmental.”

Sandhill Environmental Services is a full-service environmental company located in and around Northeast Indiana. They utilize state-of-the-art equipment to conduct water testing services on drinking water and wastewater operations, among others.

Along with their field work, the students conducted lab work.

“We analyzed biomass in those samples here at Trine,” Ava said, along with sending the samples to the Sandhill Environmental labs.

In the lab, they took a bottle they collected sample water in and engaged in vacuum filtration to determine Total Solid Suspension.

“Basically, we were just trying to see what type of stuff we had in our sample, living or nonliving,” Stephen said.

Looking ahead at a post-internship future

“This internship was a lot of fun,” Stephen said. “I was able to become more familiar with proper lab techniques, how to manage time in a laboratory, and how to coordinate with my colleagues to ensure that what needed to be done was done.”

“I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to do something in the lab or in the field with science, and this was a great opportunity to do some work outside and get a feel for what a job in the field might entail,” Stephen shared. “I realized that something in the field would be best for me, and I have started to look into more environmentally oriented jobs.”

Ava, on the other hand, decided to participate in the internship because she was looking for experiences in the ecology field to prepare herself for graduate school.

“I thought it was very cool how there are tons of different agencies funding the project to get a better read on the water quality here and to work toward improving it,” she said. “This experience has given me valuable experience in fieldwork and lab work, and I have learned skills that I will apply to study freshwater ecology in the future.”