By Benjamin Minch, Staff Writer
Unlike other Advanced Placement (AP) classes, AP Environmental Science allows students to conduct college-level research on an environmental issue. Many student groups at Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) are conducting research in many disciplines of science such as microbiology, toxicology, ecology and pollution.
The process of conducting research is done in a very professional manner. Students must create a research proposal and present it to the teacher in order to have their research approved. Students must also gather background information by reading other scientific papers published on their topic.
Students can choose a partner to help them with the research and both of them will give presentations on their research at the end of the project around May. Many of student groups already have exciting research planned and are currently in the first stages of testing.
“I am working on studying the effects of change in salinity on phytoplankton,” said senior Cameron Nakashima. “We have set up a bunch of Petri dishes with plankton in my office and are constantly monitoring them under a microscope to observe any changes.”
This research project helps to promote creativity in students as well as develop their critical thinking skills that are necessary for careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields.
“We had to design all of the variables in our experiment from salt concentration to temperature,” said Nakashima. “We also got to design our lab name: we called it Phyto-Phlight labs.”
Pursuing independent research that is unstructured is a great way to test students’ skills and to see if they are ready for rigorous research that they might have to do in the future. If a student’s research is good enough, it can even help them gain access to research facilities and opportunities in college as well.
This is a great opportunity given to students at FVHS in AP Environmental Science classes and is one of the main draws to taking the class. Students gain a lot of valuable experience in writing research papers, gathering data without bias and creating graphs that accurately depict their data. Many of these tools will be invaluable to them at higher levels of education and eventual career.
