The collaboration continues with the Shoreham-Wading River High School science research program and Brookhaven National Laboratory’s SPARK (Student Partnerships for Advanced Research and Knowledge) program. The valuable research skills were part of a report that high school students Sasha Seletskaya and Dongkai Zhang presented to the Board of Education at the Nov. 29 meeting.

Introduced by science research teacher Dana Schaefer, the duo gave an overview of the experiments conducted at the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory and their collected data on artifacts from two individual shipwrecks located in the Peconic Bay and offshore on the South Fork. Additional ongoing projects at BNL include a survey of Long Island microplastics by students Julianna O'Neill and Katelyn Schaefer and analysis of a chondrite meteor.

Mrs. Schaefer also shared the highlights of the multiyear high school program, in which students also participated in data collection through the Day in the Life of the Peconic Estuary Program and the findings of the experimentation, sediment analysis

and reestablishment of native plant species around the Shoreham-Wading River High School campus pond. She thanked the administration and Board of Education members for championing the impressive benefits for SWR students.

Date Added: 12/12/2022