West Haven, Conn., April 24, 2007 - Students at the University of New Haven (UNH) are helping maintain nature's balance and providing valuable mentoring to high school students in the process. UNH junior and marine-biology major Katie Bernabeo, for example, is responsible for culturing three breeding pairs of seahorses in a 220-gal salt-water system-no mean feat given the tiny creatures' delicate constitution. She shares responsibility for the fish with the high school student she is mentoring, Dana Clough, as part of a collaborative agreement made in December 2006 between the University of New Haven and the Sound School Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center in New Haven.
The Sound School is an inter-district, college preparatory high school and a part of the New Haven Public School System. The agreement between The Sound School and UNH provides mentoring opportunities and allows the two institutions to share equipment, facilities, and other resources, in addition to enabling the high school students to take marine biology classes at UNH. The University signed a similar agreement in Feb. 2007 with the Bridgeport Aquaculture Center.
Bernabeo and Clough's goal is to propagate a sustainable supply of the seahorse genus Hippocampus erectus-native to Long Island Sound-as an alternative to depleting those in the wild. Seahorses are popular with salt-water aquarium hobbyists and Bernabeo sees their work as a preventative measure. Care for the fish includes a three-step water filtration process, three feedings and careful monitoring of water temperature and chemistry each day. Bernabeo and Clough track the seahorses' diet on a computer database, ensuring that they receive enough nutrients to survive and procreate. "Seahorses are very difficult to raise and are very finicky eaters," Bernabeo says. "They are so fragile that they can easily be lost." So far four of the seahorses-which mate for life-have paired off, and Bernabeo is hopeful the other two will soon take to each other as well.
With plans to become a marine mammal biologist, the opportunity to begin hands-on work in her freshman year was a deciding factor in her decision to attend UNH. "Other schools don't often have these kinds of opportunities until your sophomore or junior year," Bernabeo says.
Other collaborations between UNH and Sound School students include oyster and lobster propagation, again with an eye toward preservations of the species. In addition, large tanks are being prepared for a coral-raising project slated to begin in Sept. 2007. Dr. Carmela Cuomo, coordinator of the Marine Biology Program at UNH and a member of The Sound School's Scientific Advisory Council, says that the scope of the students' projects already underway demonstrates the value of the two schools' symbiosis.
A leader in experiential learning, the University of New Haven provides its students with a unique combination of solid liberal arts and real-world, hands-on professional training. A private University founded in 1920, UNH has a full-time undergraduate enrollment of more than 2,400 students-with 70 percent residing on its 80-acre main campus-and a graduate school enrollment that exceeds 1,700. The University offers more than 80 undergraduate degrees and more than 25 graduate degrees through its four colleges, in fields such as sports management, nutrition and dietetics, forensic science, music and sound recording, engineering, computer science, fire science and criminal justice. University of New Haven students study abroad through a variety of distinctive programs.
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