To Houma We Go

Tomorrow, I will take a group of USM undergraduate students for an undergraduate excursion to LUMCON, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. LUMCON's main facility is in the small village of Cocodrie, LA, and sits well above the water line to protect it from hurricanes and storm damage. The facility supports student and faculty research, outreach events, and includes dormitories for visiting groups, a full cafeteria, laboratory spaces, aquaria with local marine life, areas for podcast and video production, marshland, docks, and research vessels, including the smaller R/V Acadiana that we will take out with the students to perform fish trawls. LUMCON is also responsible for the operation of the R/V Point Sur, which is USM's large research vessel.

In total, we have 32 students and eight faculty/staff members visiting LUMCON to get hands-on training in aquatic ecology, water quality and biogeochemistry, vegetation surveying, and sediment coring. We will also talk with students about how the field work is related to their coursework, how they can make a career out of the skills they gain in the field, and our faculty/staff members will share about their own career pathways. What's awesome about these MissDelta opportunities is the variety of perspectives we bring together and represent. Every one of the eight faculty and staff members is a member of an underrepresented group in the coastal and marine workforce and we all hail from different parts of the country (and world for some).

I will definitely take lots of pictures because while I will be chaperoning and supporting the field work, I do not have to lead any of the activities, which means I can be behind the camera for once and observe what our students see and say. Of course, I'll get hands on for the fishes, but perhaps I'll have one hand on the fish and the other on my camera.

Stay tuned next week for a photo drop!