In July 2023, ESR partnered with Lakeside School to develop the Lakeside Summer Research Institute (LSRI) program for Summer at Lakeside. The Lakeside Summer Research Institute (LSRI) was a four-week summer research experience where high school students engage in mentored research projects in the geosciences with tangible, externally-visible outcomes (e.g., educational blog posts, presentations at regional and national conferences, peer-reviewed publications). The program, developed by Michael Town, was piloted by him in 2018 and expanded in the summer of 2023 to include 14 students, and include a second mentor, Susan Howard. The 2023 LSRI program was focused on four research topics:
- The Weather and Climate of Mount Baker
- the Antarctic Ice Sheet and Ice Shelves
- Antarctic Sea Ice and Climate
- Climate Studies in Greenland.
The students were exposed to a mixture of state-of-the-art data analysis (Python, Pandas), satellite data (e.g. ICEsat-2, SSMI), other weather and climate data products (e.g. ERA5). The students had the opportunity to interact with and learn from other professional scientists at ESR and the University of Washington and participated in a day of field work in the Mt. Baker National Recreation Area.
To find out more about this program, read the blog post by Susan Howard about her work with the students:
And read individual student posts about their experience through the group links below: