THE MAURY RIVER ALLIANCE: A MODEL FOR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, SERVICE LEARNING, AND CURRICULAR ENHANCEMENT

The Maury River Alliance (MRA) was developed at Washington and Lee (W&L) as a cooperative program involving local colleges (W&L and Virginia Military Institute), high schools, government agencies, and conservation groups. The purpose is both to serve the community and to provide W&L and VMI students and faculty with research opportunities. We are addressing the connection between land use and water quality with a creative merging of technical, social, and educational aspects of local watershed management. It has existed as a mostly volunteer organization (with 42 current volunteers) that samples the Maury river (a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay) and its tributaries, including the urban stream flowing through the city and campus.

Thus far, the MRA has served as thesis research for many undergraduate students including such projects as the impact of land use on water quality, GIS applications, nutrients and bacteria in storm water runoff, sediment load analysis, and a lead problem within the watershed. Work by these students and others has prompted remedial activities within the urban corridor of the watershed and the potential of additional activity in the more rural reaches of the river. The program has recently expanded to encompass an environmental initiative within the university's service league and will expose a broader range of students to local water quality issues. As part of the MRA, work on the river has further been used in hands-on classroom exercises in W&L's Environmental Studies curriculum and as a field/environmental component of introductory geology.

In addition to exposing the students to a community effort, the ultimate interest for the professors involved is to focus on the science being produced by the watershed work. The benefit of the program is the proximity of the study site to the school and the vast numbers of volunteers involved in the project. These numbers facilitate large data sets and a plethora of research possibilities yet also present a challenge of organization and management. While the professors focus on the data analysis, students (and now a recent graduate as director) have acted as managers of the program, thus furthering their educational opportunities within the program.