Daniela Brighenti Photo
Kosinski introduces the workshop.
“Who here is interested in science?!”The first question posed to nine students from Common Ground High School this Wednesday was “Who here is interested in science?!”
That was the first question that professionals from the Regional Water Authority and Gateway Community College posed Wednesday to a visiting group of Common Ground High School students.
Only a few meager “yes” responses followed.
The speakers spent the next two hours working on changing that.
“Science, science, science,” said Eric Flynn, interim chair of Gateway’s Engineering and Applied Technologies Department. “The best paying jobs? They are in science.”
The students gathered at a laboratory in Gateway for the fifth annual RWA Environmental Careers Summer Camp, a week-long event that seeks to expose them to careers at the water utility. This year, nine students — two seniors, three juniors and four sophomores — were selected for the camp by administrators from the enviornmentaly themed charter high school.
“This event sort of kicks off our engagement and outreach programs,” RWA Water Science Educator Lisa DiFrancesco said. “We’ve, I would say, adopted Common Ground as our school.”
Wednesday’s workshop kicked off with a presentation of the various programs available at Gateway that can lead students to careers in water management.
Rocky Tremblay, chair of the Environmental Science and Toxicology Department, told students how analytical skills such as the ones used in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields can help them more quickly find jobs upon graduation.
Flynn struck a similar tone throughout his presentation. He told students how, when he was a senior in high school, he thought he wanted to major in graphic design. His father, however, pushed him towards the sciences, thinking it would provide his son with more job opportunities in the future.
“I figured I’d like to draw and taking down all sorts of audio equipment, so why not engineering?” Flynn said. “I have friends who instead were studying poetry under the trees in Vermont or New Hampshire and now have no careers when they left.”
Flynn himself attended Gateway for two years before transferring to University of Connecticut. He paid the last two years of classes with the money he had saved during his time at Gateway, highlighting to students that classes that cost $500 at community colleges often cost in the low thousands at other universities. The Common Ground students, he said, were lucky to be having this informational session early on, so that they could make a well-founded decision after graduating high school.
Some students remained skeptical.
“But what about people like Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey?” Inayah Sharif asked. “They never finished any college.”
Flynn hammered on his point: Those were two of over seven billion people in the world. Statistically, he said, STEM degrees help a majority of individuals improve their employment prospects, quoting his own path as an example.
“Major in something that will get you a good job when you get out,” environmental science Professor Wes Winterbottom advised the students.
After telling students about Gateway’s water management program — which can lead to a career in water management in as little as 10 months — Winterbottom taught them the basics of water treatment.
In 48 states, sewage water is treated and subsequently discharged back into reservoirs; that practice is illegal only in Rhode Island and Connecticut. The alternative is recycling “via groundwater,” where the treated waste water is discharged back to a groundwater system instead.
Other states have had to succumb to even more extreme measures, Winterbottom said. He noted the case of California, which underwent a lengthy drought period this past year. There, sewage water and clean water reservoirs are coming “closer and closer together.”
“They’re all tapped out,” Winterbottom said.
He played the students a video showing how the San Jose water plant has begun turning “bathroom wastewater” directly into drinking water. The has the potential to treat about eight million gallons of water each day. Still, some students cringed with disgust at the display.
“It’s that water or no water,” DiFrancesco said. “That wouldn’t last very long,” she added, in reply to a student who shouted “No water for me!”
And though Connecticut is one of two exceptions in the country right now, Winterbottom noted that could soon change as technology in the water treatment field continues to move ahead — a factor that could make the field an attractive and exciting one for students.
“This workshop is about being provocative and learning. Today can be a path to something new, and if so, that’s great,” Dean of Academic Affairs at Gateway Mark Kosinski said. “And if today opens up a lot of questions for you, that’s also good.”
Through a series of graphs, Winterbottom noted how the industry is in the prime time for job seekers; over 50 percent of the workforce will reach retirement age within the next five years.
He added that for the last six months, there have been open positions in water management posted every Sunday in the Hartford Courant.
“Give it some thought: There’s 1,000 operators and they’re all getting pretty old,” Winterbottom said.
Other events part of the “boot camp” include a tour of the Lake Whitney Water Treatment Plant, water sampling at Lake Whitney and a pathogen research project. On Friday, students officially graduate from the Water Careers Camp.
RWA staff members hope at least some of these students will go on to lead water management careers — a field in “dire need” of quality workers.