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Collab Lab 65: Recap & Notes

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Capacity Building as an Outreach Strategy

The Freshwater Collaborative  of Wisconsin’s mission to advance freshwater education and research relies on attracting and developing talented individuals who are passionate about water science. The conventional approach to community outreach is traditionally focused on the delivery of programming — offering experiences or content to K-12 teachers and students through curriculum, site visits, summer camps, or other activities.

We worked with the Freshwater Collaborative to use our December Collab to explore a different approach. We view teachers, students, and schools not simply as recipients of programming, but as potential partners that can support and extend the work of Freshwater Collaborative members. This model empowers K-12 schools to become active partners in research and education, creating experiential learning opportunities that benefit both students and researchers.

To provide a concrete basis from which to explore this approach to engagement, we framed the discussion around a budding collaboration between Dr. Ashley Lemke, an underwater archeologist working out of UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences, and Peter Graven, a middle school science and high school robotics teacher from St. Francis. Over the past several years, his students have developed underwater ROV’s of increasing sophistication. The immediate opportunity is to deploy an ROV in service of Dr. Lemke’s research. The bigger vision is to develop additional capabilities at St. Francis and other schools to serve the specific needs of FCW researchers and its partners.

Discussion

The set-up for our discussion centered on a single faculty member working with an individual teacher on a specific project. What came out of that was a number of insights about how and where those efforts could catalyze opportunities for other K-12 teachers and schools, as well as faculty pursuing other research interests.

We split the attendees into four discussion groups, each focused on a different capacity needed to allow a K-12 school, to support research efforts of Dr. Lemke. These included:

  • An ability to engineer, prototype, and test components
  • An ability to collect images, data, water, and sediment samples
  • An ability to provide ongoing monitoring of conditions
  • An ability to document findings, tell, and share a story

A fifth set of needed abilities we had not planned to introduce as part of the discussion, was nonetheless covered as part of a broader conversation between discussion groups:

  • An ability to deploy, operate, and maintain an ROV

The discussion which followed covered opportunities to directly engage students, the importance of cultivating a sense of wonder, and the importance of soft skills — the ability of students to work effectively as a team to take on any of these challenges.

Across the participants we saw interest and excitement around:

  • The types of collaboration that might ensue
  • What K-12 students might gain from the experience
  • What individual participants or organizations might be able to do to support the efforts of Dr. Lemke and Mr. Graven directly, or to support FCW/K-12 collaboration in another area.

Given the discussion at the Collab Lab and follow-up conversations we see six areas to build upon to validate and scale the approach we’ve suggested, starting in the spring 2025 semester.

  • Facilitate the work of Dr. Lemke and Mr. Graven
  • Share that story as it evolves
  • Identify opportunities for other schools to support this effort
  • Identify additional opportunities for collaboration
  • Recruit participation from additional K-12 schools
  • Understand and document what has enabled this initial collaboration and a path forward to extend the depth and reach of these efforts

Notes From Initial Brainstorming

Ability to engineer prototype and test components

  • Teachers need to have a framework/plan to structure students’ learning experiences to develop their design & making skills
  • Teachers need to be able to and actually model failure & Learning so that students know what it looks like and what it produces
  • Students need self awareness & self management skills to monitor and adjust their emotions to persist and create
  • Students need to have practices or skills to stretch their thinking and ideate broadly so their ideas break new ground
  • Students need to be able to sketch/model their ideas so they can discuss and make
  • Students need to have clarity about the connection between the design and real world application so they can test effectively
  • Students need to have multiple experiences of the make-test-revise cycle and feel a sense of accomplishment and to believe there is value in failure
  • Students need to be able to see their efforts and failure as a part of a lifelong learning journey so they persist and learn
  • Students need to be able to let go of their ideas and take an adversarial approach to find flaws so they can go farther faster
  • Students need to develop an appreciation for the discomfort that comes from presenting their ideas, getting, feedback, being wrong, and being uncertain so they remain open to growth
  • All parties deal with failure — playing it safe leads to not enough prototyping


Ability to collect images, data, water, and sediment samples

  • Modular construction for multiple purposes — right tool for the tasks
  • Generalized tool vs specific tasks
  • Photography
  • Lighting
  • High quality camera
  • Shutter speed
  • Video vs photos
  • Coring
  • Water Samples
  • Sterility, DNA,
  • Grabber hand for artifacts
  • Mapping
  • Endless types of data (interdisciplinarity) to collect. Explore & let the science happen– don’t lock yourself in too soon
  • Underwater mechanics important to take into account
  • Streamlined
  • Multi-perspective
  • balanced/shifting balance
  • Transform something that works on land to something that works underwater
  • Research & Art
  • Videography – stabilization of film (See film all too clear film)
  • Need to know where you are
  • explore/make questions
  • Underwater special challenges
  • Design thinking
  • Project management
  • Give up control
  • Deal with failure
  • Visual thinking
  • Resilience


Ability to provide ongoing monitoring

  • A Reason Why
  • Creativity – draw from other disciplines
  • Story purpose
  • Community
  • Contributing (leads to story)
  • Reasons to do it in a certain way — e.g. being scientific
  • Model scenarios for winter tests
  • simulations
  • Drill through pond ice (winter strategy to get out on smaller lakes)
  • Big challenge is precise location
  • Get practice in an accessible way –virtual simulations, small scale trials
  • Data logging
  • System for submitting and maintaining data
  • Decentralized
  • out of silo
  • People doing a part of a bigger, longer term effort
  • Possibly revolving group with new comers
  • Internal story telling to bring in new participants
  • Data logging – consistent methods
  • What story are we trying to tell?
  • Knowing who the community is
  • Virtual training/accessibility


Ability to document findings, tell and share a story

  • Wonderment
  • Speak/voice
  • Listen
  • Kids speak
  • Share a story — kids, teachers, families
  • Kids — visual communication/posters/art
  • Cyclical feedback/revision
  • 37 sec reels [how things work]
  • Local pride/trust
  • clubs


Ability to operate an ROV

  • Put in
  • Take out
  • Know where I am
  • Know what I’m seeing
  • Maneuver reliably
  • Maintain it
  • Clean
  • Repair
  • Train other operators
  • Make use of a test environment to improve skills

A special thanks to our featured guests,

Peter Graven — Science & Robotics, St Francis School District

Marissa Jablonski – Executive Director, Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin

Ashley Lemke — Associate Professor – Anthropology, UW Milwaukee

As always, we’re appreciative of MSOE for letting us make use of the NM Lab in the WE Energies STEM Center every month.

Up Next

Collab Lab 66: Engaging Families Thursday February 13th, 5:30 to 8:30 pm at MSOE’s STEM Center

Actively using some form of PBL with your students and looking for ideas or encouragement from others? Consider joining your peers in the inspirED Community.

Collab Lab 65: Beyond Skills – Building Capabilities

Building the skills of individual students is fine. What more can happen if we focus on building the capabilities of a school?

The simple thing to do in school is provide instruction.  Enroll, instruct, repeat. The best we can hope for in that model is that instruction gets better.

What if we had bigger aims?

What if we consciously worked to build the capabilities of students to work together to achieve a goal beyond learning the curriculum? What more can students learn about real world challenges, the broad range of folks working to address them, how to work effectively as a team, and how they can make an impact if we give them that opportunity?

The jumping off point for December’s discussion is an exploration of how underwater ROVs developed by middle and high school students might support the work of university researchers. We’ll explore capabilities around exploration, sampling, and data analysis, where we are now, and where we might go. We’ll also identify the first set of challenges K-12 teachers and students might take on in a collaborative effort to build a unique set of capabilities in Milwaukee.

Agenda

5:30 to 6:00 pm Grab something to eat, meet some interesting, passionate people
6:00 to 6:15 pm Welcome and introductions
6:15 to 8:00 pm Let’s talk through how to do this
8:00 to 8:30 pm Wrap up and next steps

Food and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided. There is no charge for participation but space is limited!

Featured Participants

Among others, you’ll have a chance to talk with:

Peter Graven — Science & Robotics, St Francis School District

Peter teaches 7th and 8th-grade science and high school robotics in the St. Francis School District. Over the past 27 years, he has taught a variety of science and mathematics courses, including Earth and Life Sciences. Graven serves as the lead teacher and mentor for SFROBOTICS, a program that engages students in diverse robotics competitions such as FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST LEGO League, MATE ROV, and SEAPERCH, as well as in STE(A)M projects with local and global impact, supported by strategic partnerships.

Dedicated to innovation, Graven is constantly researching new ways to inspire proactive learning. He is known for designing opportunities that encourage creative problem-solving, independent invention, and collaborative teamwork. His classroom is a hub of exploration, blending technology and active engagement to foster deep learning and skill development.

Over the past eight years Peter and his students have developed capabilities to design, build and operate underwater ROVs of increasing sophistication. They are now exploring how the ROVs they’ve built can be deployed to support hands-on learning focused on environmental science and archeology.

 

Marissa Jablonski – Executive Director, Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin

Marissa is an accomplished water engineer, environmental advisor, and plastics-reduction expert who has worked in more than 45 countries. Her work with The Freshwater Collaborative leverages expertise across 13 University of Wisconsin institutions to lead the global community in addressing freshwater challenges, and advance its mission to:

  • Create knowledge to solve freshwater challenges through collaborative research across academia in fields such as natural and applied sciences, engineering, economics, social sciences, arts, humanities and policy;
  • Recruit and develop talented professionals across all freshwater disciplines through intentional structuring of curriculum, training and workplace experiences; and
  • Improve the well-being of natural ecosystems and all people by applying research and training to engage and serve communities and solve freshwater challenges.

 

Ashley Lemke — Associate Professor – Anthropology, UW Milwaukee

Dr. Lemke is an Anthropological Archaeologist. In addition to her role at UWM, she is the former Chair of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology , and Explorers Club Fellow. Lemke is a leading researcher on the archaeology of hunter-gatherers. She has worked extensively on both terrestrial and underwater archaeological projects from the Lower Paleolithic in Europe to 19th-century Nunamiut archaeological sites in the Arctic. She is an expert on submerged ancient sites in the Americas and has researched such sites in the Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, and Atlantic Ocean. She has directed excavation projects in Texas and Michigan, as well as underwater projects in the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean, including numerous field schools. She has experience excavating at numerous archaeological sites in Europe including Germany, Spain, Romania, and Serbia.

 

Learn Deep Fellows – Water Projects

Pete Reynolds Blog, Learn Deep Fellows

Our Learn Deep Fellows wrapped up the STEM Studio workshop on Friday with a presentation and discussion of their projects to colleagues and program partners.  The projects developed over the course of the past two weeks focus on water, but are aimed at the much larger goals the fellows have for their students– that they can see a broad range of career possibilities, that they can see themselves as creators and that they think of themselves as someone who can make a difference in their community.  Those three goals led to a sequence of three projects which flow together over the course of the school year.

Our Water Our Stories

Students will talk with each other, people in their lives, and others in the broader community involved in the provision or use of water and tell the stories of what clean water means to our community.

Our Water, Our Design

Students will collaborate to design and build a prototype or model of a device to test water for qualities they care about.

Our Water, Our Community

Students will identify a location in their community, how it uses or is impacted by water, the issues posed by the current systems, and propose an equitable, sustainable solution.

 

What’s Next?

Across the arc of the three projects, Fellows identified points in each project where students can collaborate with and support the work of their peers at other schools. While the timing will vary by school, Fellows will get students involved in the first project come October.  We’ll be working to build up pool of interview candidates that represent a broad range of perspectives on water and how it is used. If you’d like to participate as an interviewee, we have a sign up form for you here: https://bit.ly/LDFwaterInterviews

Collab Lab 25 Recap

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

Water: How can we engage students in authentic learning experiences related to water and water technologies?

Beyond the facts that Milwaukee sits next to a whole lot of water and spans several watersheds, it is home to more than 200 water technology companies. This creates an opportunity not just to explore physical connections to water and the environment, but to tap into expertise around how water is used and managed.  At our February Collab Lab, we pulled together individuals from area organizations engaged water technology and issues from a variety of perspectives. We then sat them down with educators to flesh out some ideas and make the connections that can help bring those ideas to life.

 

Amber DuChateau was kind enough to step in as a guest facilitator.  She guided our discussion groups through a process that began with participants sharing what drives their work and what excites them now about what they’re working on.  From our perspective, the really interesting work in schools is driven by teachers passions.  This method of introduction provides a chance for them to connect with others who share their enthusiasm.

 

Our search for opportunities began with a brainstorming process within each discussion group.  We asked each table to generate ideas for potential projects using one or more of these strategies:

  • Mix and match — What would it look like to combine exciting work from 2 or 3 members of your table?
  • Shift context — What does it look like to take exciting work and put it in a different location, class (art music, language arts, history, business), age group?
  • Empower students — what does it look like when students drive the questions, act as mentors to younger students, lead the project
  • Distribute the work — what changes if you had 10 classes chipping in, what does it look like if you have 100?
  • Extend the scope — what changes if you can rely on the skills of students/teachers in other classes?

That process gave us a list of ideas that included:

  • What constitutes “healthy water”
  • How does water flow through the curriculum
    • gardens
    • aquaponics (our focus for Collab Lab 22)
    • connecting questions (inquiry) to answers (outcomes)
  • How is water made?
  • Connect Sweet Water’s Adopt a Storm Drain project to schools
  • First Lego League + Computational Thinking + Water problems
  • Water Poetry (with presentation of work)
  • Test presentations of water related work before visitors to Discovery World
  • Tell the story of a drop of water
  • Tell the story of a drop of water through water bracelets (each token on a bracelet tells part of the story)
  • Enlist students in UWM’s School of Freshwater Science as mentors to MPS Science teachers working with Project GUTS
  • Tell the story of the Habitat Hotels constructed for the Harbor District by Bradley Tech students
  • Extend STEMhero‘s curriculum to connect students to look at water usage of businesses near schools

With those ideas in hand, each group moved on to select one idea and create a vision for what that might look like.  Here’s where they landed:

Project Idea 1: Adopt a Storm Drain +

Goal

Students adopt one or more storm drains near their school.  Students understand the function of storm drains, how pollution can enter the system, and be swept into area streams and Lake Michigan.  Inspired by this understanding, they work to keep their storm drain(s) free from garbage that may be swept into the drain and out into area waterways.

Key Issues

  • Scalability– how can this effort spread
  • What education levels to target?

Potential Partners

  • Sweet Water
  • Green Schools Consortium

Project Idea 2: If I Were a Drop of Water

Goal

Engage student physically, mentally, and emotionally to understand the flow of a drop of water from where it lands in Milwaukee and its journey to Lake Michigan.  Use a multidisciplinary approach to help students build these stories, which are then presented to an audience from the wider community.

Where/Who/When

Across the watersheds which cover Milwaukee in grades 6-12.  Pilot the effort in 7th or 8th grade. Prep for the effort in the fall, get students outside in the spring to follow the path of water from their chosen source to the lake.

What’s Needed to Move Forward

  • Identify locations to use as starting point for water journey
    • Tap local expertise to do so (building connections between schools and partners)
  • Do a test run of the water journey with teachers
  • Map the work envisioned back to curriculum standards

How to get Started

  • Reach out to science curriculum specialists to help identify schools who might be willing to pilot
  • Run the idea past local experts to identify source locations that would allow students to follow interesting journeys

Project Idea 3: What Constitutes Healthy Water?

Goals

  • Incorporate actual water issues for Milwaukee– lead, lake levels, etc.
  • Include water quality into multidisciplinary curriculum

How to get Started

  • Identify a client (big or small) for the work
    • Miller
    • Summerfest
    • MMSD
    • Colectivo
  • Craft a project to engage students in work to explore/address the client’s concerns around water.

Thanks again to The Commons for providing the space, to Amber for facilitating, and our featured participants for the experience and insight they brought to the discussion:

Brenda Coley – Co-Executive Director, Milwaukee Water Commons
Jake Fincher – Stormwater Program Manager, Sweet Water
Tony Giron – Community Engagement Manager, Harbor District Milwaukee
Justin Hegarty, P.E., LEED A.P., Executive Director, Reflo
Kelly Ibarra – Teacher Success Lead, STEMhero
Cate Rahmlow – Director of Sector Strategy Development, WEDC
Rochelle Sandrin – Science Curriculum Specialist, Milwaukee Public Schools
Liz Sutton, Outreach Manager, UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences

Collab Lab 25: Water

How can we engage students in authentic learning experiences related to water and water technologies?

Beyond the facts that Milwaukee sits next to a whole lot of water and spans several watersheds, it is home to more than 200 water technology companies.  This creates an opportunity not just to explore physical connections to water and the environment, but to tap into expertise around how water is used and managed.  Join colleagues from public, private, and charter schools from across greater Milwaukee as well as some folks from outside of K-12 to flesh out some ideas and make the connections that can help bring those to life.

 

Agenda

5:30 – 6:00 Grab something to eat and drink, say hello

6:00 – 6:30 Introductions

6:30- 8:30 Let’s explore some ideas

Food and beverage will be provided. There is no charge for participation but space is limited!

 

 

Featured Participants

Brenda Coley – Co-Executive Director, Milwaukee Water Commons (MWC)

Milwaukee Water Commons is a cross-city network that fosters connection, collaboration and broad community leadership on behalf of our waters. MWC promotes stewardship of, equitable access to and shared decision-making for our common waters.

Brenda brings to MWC her philosophy on being a servant leader. She is committed to exploring the influences of one’s own culture or cultures and understanding ways in which groups of people have been and are treated in society, using that knowledge to develop strategies to effectively engage diverse groups of people in important community issues.

Jake Fincher – Stormwater Program Manager, Sweet Water

Sweet Water is committed to restoring the Greater Milwaukee watersheds to conditions that are healthy for swimming and fishing. They bring diverse partners together and provide the leadership and innovation necessary to protect and restore our shared water resources. Jake manages Sweet Water’s stormwater program which includes initiatives like the Respect Our Waters outreach campaign, the Adopt-A-Storm Drain program, and a coast-wide communications strategy. Each of these focus to inform and educate community members about stormwater pollution prevention. He holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in Integrated Science/Business, with an emphasis on water.

Tony Giron – Community Engagement Manager, Harbor District Milwaukee

The Harbor District has been at the center of our region’s prosperity for hundreds of years – first as a rice marsh with plentiful fish and game, then as an economic hub that served industries throughout the State. Now, much of its land sits abandoned or in disrepair, its waterways are polluted – but its potential is immense.

The Harbor District Initiative brings together local, state, and federal government efforts, private sector interests, and community enthusiasm to transform this area into a vibrant and productive waterfront that strengthens our community and regional economy.

Tony is responsible for building relationships and implementing programs that create or reinforce community connections to the Harbor District. His projects include organizing Harbor Fest, coordinating tours of the area, and seeking opportunities to collaborate with local partners.

 

Justin Hegarty, P.E., LEED A.P., Executive Director, Reflo

Justin has over 14 years of engineering experience including managing several diverse teams and water resource projects. He co-founded Reflo to work with community stakeholders in the Milwaukee-area to design and build creative and meaningful green infrastructure. Shortly after organizing the nonprofit it became evident that a strong local movement was necessary to advance green schools initiatives in the area, and Reflo began organizing the Green Schools Consortium of Milwaukee. Reflo has supported many exciting community-based green infrastructure initiatives including rainwater harvesting for urban agriculture, organizing and funding the first Green Schools Conference in Milwaukee, developing an interactive app to explore local water projects, and organizing a mapping user’s group to share community data with the intent of increasing communication and resource sharing across organizations.

 

Kelly Ibarra – Teacher Success Lead, STEMhero

STEMhero offers a curriculum geared towards educating students about water and utility usage through real time, individualized data collection. Previously, Kelly served at two different Urban Milwaukee schools as a middle school ELA teacher and most recently, as a “Master Teacher” and instructional coach. She resides in Bayview with her husband and three lovely children.

 

Cate Rahmlow – Director of Sector Strategy Development, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

Kate serves as project strategist and developer for targeted investments in Wisconsin’s food, energy, and water sectors. For each of these sectors, Cate works with industry leaders, economic development partners, universities and other schools to advance economic cluster strategies that strengthen public/private partnerships and help companies better innovate and compete in the global marketplace. Among noteworthy projects,Cate has been involved with the cluster development strategy of The Water Council—which has been recognized as a model for successful cluster development by entities including the Brookings Institution and CoreNet Global.

 

Rochelle Sandrin – Science Curriculum Specialist, Milwaukee Public Schools

Rochelle leads science curriculum development and design for Milwaukee Public Schools in grades K-12. Responsibilities include leading professional development for school and district administrators, writing and supporting science-related grants, updating curriculum and resources to align with the Next Generation Science Standards, and managing a small team of science teacher leaders as they work directly with teachers in the schools around the district. Our current work includes a focus on equity of access to science education for all students, and culturally relevant curriculum, resources, and teaching practices in our classrooms.

 

Liz Sutton, Outreach Manager, UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences

The School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the largest water focused academic research institute on the Great Lakes and the only North American school of higher education solely dedicated to freshwater issues. The School trains the next generation of freshwater professionals and advances strategic science to inform policy, improve management, and promote the health and sustainability of the Great Lakes and freshwater systems worldwide. Liz has spent her career working to engage and inspire young people through STEM and environmental science education. In 2008 she transitioned into higher education, working as the Assistant Director and STEM Specialist for UWM College for Kids before developing a formal outreach department within the School of Freshwater Sciences with her at the helm.

2025-26 Collab Labs

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