The Visitor Center has four interns working with us in the exhibits and interpreting with the public this summer. We’ll be bringing you updates and occasional posts from them. Meet our first: Diana Roman, Westminster, MD

Diana just graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. She earned a B.A. in Biology with an emphasis in ecology and a minor in Art History (the only person in her graduating class to earn any sort of a minor, she was told). For her degree, she took classes in limnology and the ecology of Maryland plants, studied and researched for a semester in Australia, and wrote a senior thesis in neuroscience. Diana came to OSU for the summer to try her hand at a marine education job, as she pins down what she would like to study in graduate school. “I know a lot more about what I don’t want to do at this point, than exactly what I want to do.”

After the first week, she’s surprised at how tired she is, but also at how different visitor backgrounds are. She’s encountered visitors who live on the coast who are very familiar with the tides, and people from Utah, for example, who have never encountered the types of marine creatures found in the ocean. “It makes me wonder about what kids are learning in landlocked states if they can’t apply it,” Diana says, if their ocean science is not connected to the local waterways.

This summer, she’s most looking forward to trying out a 40-hour-a-week job as well as her own project. She and two of our other interns will be investigating visitor use of the wave tanks, and she’s hoping to concentrate on the erosion/near-shore tank. She’s already noticed a difference in erosion mitigation on the West Coast vs. the Chesapeake Bay. Here, riprap, aka “dynamic revetment,” is widely used, designed to absorb wave energy better as the pieces bounce up and down with waves. On the Chesapeake Bay, however, erosion abatement is more frequently done with natural materials.

She’s already diving in to life at the Visitor Center. As the interns “opened” for the first time this morning, turning on exhibits and lights and checking that things are working, she said she already saved the shrimp tank from overflowing. She also hosted her first West-Coast estuary walk, where visitors were surprised it was her first.

Follow the blog to see how her wave tank project develops over the summer.

After weeks and months of spec’ing particular cameras, photographing the VC from all angles, and poring over software to handle our massive (for us) suite of video devices, the first cameras are being installed.

You’d think after all that scoping the installation would go quickly. It is, to a point. First we have to find ethernet cables long enough to run to all the drops we have (easier since we installed extra drops for just this purpose), then we have to make sure the ethernet ports are activated, then we have to figure out which IP address goes to which camera, and finally, we have to position the camera, probably the trickiest part.

We have a good head start from all the work McKenzie did, but Gene and I still spent a couple of hours figuring the right height, angle, and zoom so the first 10 could be permanently mounted. Near the wave tanks, too, we’ll have two cameras on poles that will be secured with straps, so they will be somewhat moveable if we cover the angles in another way. The angle, zoom, and focus will be re-done after each is mounted, of course, but a first-pass assured us we had the position right to capture the parts of the exhibit we were hoping to capture. And, of course, we’ve moved exhibits around since the last time we planned camera locations …

Behind the scenes, we have the computer system and software setup to watch what’s going on, though we still need to set up remote access to view the cameras. For now, we’re getting close to having eyes on the VC entrance and exit points, the octopus tank, the touch tanks, and the wave tanks. It’s cool to see what was only a plan actually start to be put in place, and relatively on schedule, too!

Laura and Katie are getting ready to collect their dissertation data this summer. Laura will be studying volunteers at Hatfield Visitor Center to see how they interact with visitors. Katie is studying scientists and non-scientists to see how they make meaning from images like those projected on the Magic Planet.

Each has navigated the proposal process and is in the midst of the Institutional Review Board approval for their projects. In the meantime, they are piloting data to make sure what they thought in their heads works in real life; Laura’s been ensuring that the looxcie cameras that visitors will wear will not get dropped in the touch tanks or record too much video in the restroom. Katie’s been making sure her images show up correctly and that the eyetracker doesn’t burn anyone’s eyeballs.

Each of them has been interviewed about their projects. You can listen to the podcasts:

Laura

Katie

We’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, and comments here!