SCHUYLER BUTZE ’23 BS AND ALEXANDRA KUSHNIR, SENIOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE STUDENTS AT OHIO STATE DURING SUMMER 2022, WERE AMONG THE FIRST TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SEMESTER AT STONE LAB PROGRAM.
“I kind of spent the past three years behind books,” Butze said. “So, I was really looking forward to starting to apply a lot of the things that I had learned about.”
Both Butze and Kushnir took courses in water quality and management, along with others that interested them individually, such as taxonomy, geographic information systems, and more. While they described the classes as being challenging and requiring out-of-class work, the classes showed to be positive experiences for them academically.
While classes, studying, and other academic events do take up the bulk of their time on the island, students are able to spend their free time doing whatever they please, whether it be yoga or playing sports, like Butze did during her free time, or conducting more research in the water quality labs, like Kushnir.
Students in the program are also able to make connections with weekly guest speakers who conduct research in their fields of interest. Butze and Kushnir both said they gained more perspective on what research in their field could look like and were able to follow up with these researchers after their presentations.
“I think that taking classes there, it’s a whole different experience,” Kushnir said. “[You] spent a lot of time with your professors, so you could ask a lot of questions, and if you had any doubts, they could clarify everything.”