The Living Laboratory

Limnologically Speaking

It’s the study of lakes, and HWS’s geoscience department makes the most of it.

In 1975, William Ahrnsbrak, faculty member in the future Department of Geoscience, was given a fairly unusual assignment: Buy a boat — one capable of facilitating research and instruction on Seneca Lake.

After exhausting a few leads, Ahrnsbrak found a 1954 Navy L-boat being used for private cargo shipment in Maine. The Colleges’ made an offer for what was then known as the Toro, and Hobart and William Smith became a small undergraduate liberal arts institution which just happens to own and operate a 65-foot, 58-ton floating oceanographic laboratory, renamed the HWS William F. Scandling (formerly known as the HWS Explorer).

There is no overestimating the significance of that acquisition. The HWS William F. Scandling facilitates not only geoscience, but other science courses, independent studies, and the Environmental Studies Summer Youth Institute. Local high school classes board it, as do various visitors (e.g., alums at Reunion, pictured). Faculty members — Ahrnsbrak and sedimentation specialist John Halfman notably — conduct research from its decks, much of which feeds regional efforts to understand and preserve Seneca Lake.

The boat is outfitted with an overhead boom and winch, a bottom-sampling corer, weather sensors, an on-board computer, pH meter, temperature profiler, radar, and two fathometers. "When I have colleagues from other places visit and I show them the boat," Ahrnsbrak says, "they tend to stand there slack-jawed."

The Colleges’ staff includes a full-time captain, John Nichols (pictured), a former state trooper who has "retired and gone to sea." With mate John Abbott, he drives and maintains the HWS William F. Scandling, contributing in this way to the academic experience."The students are fun people," he says. "I hope my being here helps inspire somebody to study harder and to go for the gold."

The HWS William F. Scandling was, like geoscience itself, an outgrowth of something bigger. By the late 1960s, the Colleges, under then-President Allan Kuusisto, had decided to apply its interdisciplinary, liberal arts approach to environmental science (as another choice alongside pre-med). Donald Woodrow, who arrived in 1965, taught some of the first lake-studies courses (and, for that matter, the first geology courses) at the Colleges. Ahrnsbrak was hired in 1971 — the first faculty member selected specifically for an interest in limnology (the study of lakes). They argued that any emphasis on the environment in the curriculum must include that big lake. "The locale has a curricular print," says Woodrow, now chair of geoscience.

In the mid-’60s, the Colleges had joined a consortium of upstate colleges studying and utilizing the Finger Lakes. They shared vessels, including a 65-foot wooden-hulled T-boat, the Lake Diver IV. Field work on the lake and instruction in what eventually became geoscience began, essentially, on Lake Diver IV. But it was a shoestring operation, says Woodrow. Equipment was sometimes missing, and one of the consortium’s boats actually sank at the dock. "It was really tough," he says. By 1975, HWS decided to buy its own boat.

In 1977, the Colleges received a set of grants from the National Science Foundation to formally convert its existing geology, oceanography, and related interests to the Department of Geoscience. Today, the department offers lake-related courses in limnology, oceanography, hydrogeology, etc., plus a host of other geosciences. Many of its students are bound for graduate programs, although not always geoscience. "There are graduates working in fields outside their majors here," says Ahrnsbrak. "We provide application in all the sciences."

The HWS William F. Scandling and geoscience influence a wide swath of students, but few more than Tina Savarese. A geoscience major, she graduated last June, having concentrated on limnology, while also teaching in the Colleges’ two programs for high schoolers. Her entire undergraduate career was colored by the lake.

"By the end you see this huge web of things that are interrelated," she says. "You see how connected everything is."

She’s now teaching at the Teton Science School in Wyoming, which provides science seminars, short-courses, etc., to students of all ages. She’s planning a career in science education. "The experience of working hands-on on the HWS William F. Scandling is something I bring to my students," she concludes.

According to Woodrow, it’s the Savarese experience, more than any other, that connects the Colleges firmly to Seneca Lake. "We see a hell of a large number of students," he says, "who have contact — serious, not playful contact — with Seneca Lake." — D.C.

The Seneca Lake series was researched and written by Dana Cooke and Peter Rolph '85 — writer/editors in the Office of College Relations. Portions of the series also appear in the Fall '97 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey. To request a copy, e-mail Susan Murad at murad@hws.edu.