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Clackamas Water Environment Services (WES) recently partnered with the Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences (CAIS) in Oregon City for a program that provided CAIS students with a real world, hands-on learning experience.
Students from CAIS’ Biotechnology course took an in-depth tour of WES’ Tri-City Water Resource Recovery Facility to gather data for their respective class projects.
The students’ output included creating a hypothesis, gathering data to test their claims, analyzing the data, and reporting the results.
Students then created posters with their findings, which they presented to instructors, classmates, parents and experts from WES.
The course provides students with an immersive dive into the world of science and the use of mathematics to make sense of the data collected.
The scientific process forms the foundation for students to create a hypothesis, define a set of experiments, and use statistics to make sense of the results gathered.
“More than anything, students experience how science involves failure and learning from it to make progress anyway,” said Course Instructor Martin Rausch.
This program is just the latest innovative educational collaboration between WES and CAIS.
In 2020, WES approached CAIS to develop a unique educational experience to teach students about career opportunities within engineering, construction and operations by allowing them to study WES’ Tri-City Solids Handling Improvements Project at the Tri-City facility.
WES’ contractors Fowler Construction and Jacobs Engineering also took part in the program.
Students toured the construction site, gathered information for their class projects, and then put together presentations for their CAIS classes, which were reviewed by WES experts along with representatives from Fowler and Jacobs.
More than just educational opportunities, projects like these can help WES grow the future workforce that will continue to serve our local communities.
Working with CAIS and other schools and organizations allows WES to engage students in the work that WES does so they can learn how the work is important to protecting public health and the environment.
WES is dedicated to educating community members of all ages from all walks of life
To learn more about WES, please visit https://www.clackamas.us/wes
