Life Core Samples: A sci-art student workshop
with Dr. Zoe Courville and Julia Dooley, West Chester East HS, & the Garage
Earth Day- 4/22/2016, Talk and student exhibition at Street Road - 4/23/2016
This workshop was made possible by Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts.
Visit the Life Core Sample Page to see students' work. Julia presented this 'Life Core' workshop she and polar scientist Dr. Zoe Courville developed with Street Road at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this December: Life Cores: A Sci-Art Collaboration Between a Snow/Ice Researcher, an Artist/Educator, Students, and Street Road Artists Space Thursday, 15 December 2016; 08:00 - 10:00 Session: Climate Literacy: The Climate is Changing - Are We?: The Arts as an Ally in Invoking Change https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2016/ |
Artist Julia Dooley's work on Antarctica was shown at Street Road in 2015 as part of our Sailing Stones exhibition. In connection with this, and made possible by generous support from Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, Dooley and Street Road invited scientist Dr. Zoe Courville to visit and to teach local students at The Garage Community and Youth Center and West Chester East High School about her polar research, and in particular the use of ice core samples to investigate how the snow in remote places is being impacted by human activities.
In preparation, students will engaged in a sci-art project developed by Dooley for Street Road: over the course of a month before Courville's visit, students created Life Core Samples - a take on ice core samples: they collected layers of items taken from everyday life in plastic tubes, all the while keeping a journal of the daily additions, along with their thoughts, ideas, and recording of weather patterns. When they met with Courville and Dooley, they were introduced to polar research, as well as ways art and science can relate to and inform each other. Dr. Zoe Courville is a research mechanical engineer working at the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH and an adjunct assistant professor at the Thayer School of Engineering and the Earth Science Department at nearby Dartmouth College. She studies the physical properties of snow and ice from polar regions. Her research work is focused on the Greenland ice sheet and in Antarctica. She works on a variety of problems including snow strength, snow reflectance and snow densification. She has made thirteen trips to Greenland and five trips to Antarctica, taking part in large overland expeditions and in deep ice core drilling projects. She recently finished an expedition across the Greenland ice sheet with the goal of understanding how soot from forest fires and coal burning is being transported to the ice sheet and what that means for the amount of sunlight the snow will absorb; increased sunlight absorption being a primary factor in increasing snowmelt across Greenland. The complex interplay of snow and climate is revealed through the use of satellite imagery, complex chemistry, and good old fashioned back breaking work digging hundreds of snow pits across the frozen landscape.She is originally from Fraser, CO, where she grew up loving skiing and the outdoors. She has a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Denver, where she was a member of the varsity cross-country ski team. She has a MS and a PhD in materials science from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.
Julia Dooley holds a BFA in Photographic Illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an MEd from Wilmington College. Her work has been shown at the Newark Arts Center and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, among other venues. She teaches science and is a Talent Development Teacher with the Christina School District in Wilmington, Delaware. She is a founding member of Polar Educators International. In 2007, she traveled to Antarctica as part of ANDRILL ARISE, which invites educators to accompany the ANDRILL geological expeditions and develop innovative and effective education and outreach approaches that connect the public with Andrill's efforts recover important geological records that lie hidden beneath Antarctica's icy blanket.
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