Hello readers of my second and final blog post of the summer of 2023! My name is Keon Kiser and I am a third-year OSU student studying environmental engineering. During my academic endeavors I have had the great privilege of working for the Wasco County OSU Extension office the past two summers. This blog post is a good opportunity to share my experiences with OSU Extension.

This past summer I’ve worked heavily with my supervisor, Lu Seapy, coworkers Bob M. and Susan M., and a fellow OSU intern, Theo Sandoz, on 4-H STEM summer camps. We worked together on organizing a variety of camps for youth that include hiking camps along the Columbia River, VEX robotics camps, Protobots, Drones and a Makey-Makey camp. In these camps we taught basic coding languages, physics of simple circuits, local biology, notebooking, and soldering skills. The variety of technical skills taught at these camps were a good application of skills I have learned in the past. But it was also a good learning experience, because I had to reach a certain level of mastery in order to teach each skill. For example, I have previous experience programming robots and creating engineering notebooks, but I had to practice my soldering skills as I had not soldered too much in the past. I had to constantly read up on local biology in order to teach the subject during the hiking camps. Also, I was given the task to independently lead a series of VEX Robotics and hiking camps. At the VEX camps I introduced the upcoming competition and focused on having the youth practice strategy, documentation, robot design and robot building. Then, at the series of 4-H hikes, I managed a group of youth and an assistant from The Dalles Parks and Recreation office. I contacted families and instructed campers in local biology.

Aside from the 4-H STEM summer camps, I was able to work with Jacob Powell, a Sherman and Wasco County extension agent, on his wheat-crop research projects. The overall idea of the project was to study grain sizes and soil micronutrients like nitrogen and phosphate across various combinations of nitrogen levels and fertilizers to see if there were any significant differences in yield. During this time, I witnessed the importance of accounting for any possible variable that could affect the results. For example, Jacob and I did not see any real obvious differences in grain sizes across most of the treatments, which could imply that none of the treatments would be any better than another tested treatment. However, we had to take into account the weather, as it did not rain a lot over the summer. The crops probably did not have enough moisture to carry the nutrients up the wheat stocks. This was a great lesson for me as I intend to participate in a bioremediation research project back at OSU. Additionally, I was happy to see the information and results gathered and presented from the fire break trials I helped Jacob with the previous summer.

Overall, OSU Extension has provided me ample opportunity to hone technical skills (like soldering), to become a better team leader and teacher, and to experience contributing, in one way or another, in scientific research. I have had so much fun working with the youth and watching them learn and grow many new skills throughout the summer, and from year to year. Additionally, the staff at Wasco County are great people who truly live the OSU Extension mission of serving the community. Their friendliness made working fun and their focus challenged me to put forth my best effort. I would rate this experience as two thumbs up and a smiley ball 🙂. Thank you!