Schools

Climate Change Summit to Draw 300 Students to Grossmont College

Helix Charter High School among local schools taking part in Saturday event with scientists.

Teens from Helix Charter High School and St. Martin of Tours Academy in La Mesa will be among 300 elementary, middle, and high school students taking part in a Climate Change Student Summit on Saturday at Grossmont College.

“Students will discuss climate change via videoconference with their peers across the country, as well as with industry scientists and graduate students,” said the county Office of Education in a press release.

Called C2S2, the summit is a project of a University of Nebraska-based group called Andrill (ANtarctic geological DRILLing), which calls itself a “multinational collaboration of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin using Cape Roberts Project technology.” 

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Andrill adds:

The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent were glacial and interglacial changes in the Antarctica region. Future scenarios of global warming require guidance and constraint from past history that will reveal potential timing frequency and site of future changes.

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The summit has been held various places for several years. The Grossmont College summit will provide middle and high school students the chance to conduct research, present outcomes, and share their knowledge through PowerPoint presentations, video and audio podcasts, stage performances, and even a board game, the release said.

Students from San Diego and Ventura counties, Fairbanks, AK; Omaha and Seattle will take part, as well as Antarctic Geological Drilling Outreach Coordinator Louise Huffman; 12 scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, SDSU and UC Davis and Grossmont College

Saturday’s event will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Grossmont College Auditorium, 8800 Grossmont College Dr., El Cajon.

“Climate change is an issue of great interest in the community, and among middle and high school students,” said a statement from the county Office of Education.  “Bringing climate change science projects into local schools gives     students the chance to talk with peers across the country and across cultures, and also to hear from scientists with experience in the field.”

Before the summit, teachers took part in two training workshops, and received materials for use in their classrooms, the office said.


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