MEDIA, Pa. — Since opening in 1967, Penn State Brandywine has taught its students the value of community service by partnering with local businesses, nonprofits and municipalities. Recently, Brandywine students worked with Ridley Creek State Park to update a project 10 years in the making.
Back in 2008, Brandywine partnered with Ridley Creek to design technological additions for the park’s existing tree biodiversity educational program. At the time, Ridley Creek had launched a walk-through biodiversity quiz — the park tagged various types of trees with unique numbers, and visitors were challenged to identify all 40 species correctly using an answer key at the park’s office.
The Brandywine students, who were members of a geoscience course taught by Professor of Earth Sciences Laura Guertin, used technology to expand upon the tagged tree project. First, they created an informative, image-enhanced podcast about tree diversity through collaboration with the park’s education officer and local group Friends of Ridley Creek State Park. They also created a virtual tour of tree biodiversity in Google Earth. In 2009, the students even published an article about their work in the Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science.
Although the biodiversity quiz, podcast and virtual tour were a promising start, the program was not without wrinkles. With time, the students and park employees involved in the programs creation began to see its inefficiencies.
“Zip forward to 2017, where the park has been challenged by the numbered tags falling off, dying trees, et cetera,” said Guertin. “The tour and quiz is not as effective as it used to be in serving the park’s educational mission.”
Last year, new Brandywine students returned to Ridley Creek — this time, to improve upon the biodiversity tour their former classmates created. They developed new web content for Ridley Creek and developed a flat database to hold relevant content about the trees.
In spring 2018, yet another wave of Brandywine students took up the Ridley Creek project.
“As part of our campus’ Sustainovation Grant, we applied for permission to work with Ridley Creek State Park to update the tour and to bring new technology to their education effort,” Guertin said.
Since then, Brandywine faculty and students have been working with park naturalist Gary Stolz to remove all the remaining tree tags, install new signage indicating the names of trees and create an interactive, virtual tour that will be accessible on the park’s website.