On Thursday, October 2, 2008, Stroud Water Research Center hosted its 6th annual fundraising gala, The Water’s Edge, at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. Featured speaker Flip Nicklin, a National Geographic contributing photographer and the foremost underwater photographer in the world presented “Whales, A Changing View.”
Nicklin joined Stroud Center education staff earlier in the day to present a special children’s education program for Tatnall School’s seventh-grade life sciences students, “The Art of Communicating Science.”
“I was delighted to be offered the opportunity to speak at The Water’s Edge and to participate in the Stroud Center’s education program as well,” said Nicklin, the co-founder of Whale Trust, a not-for-profit research and environmental education organization based in Maui. “Education provides both of our organizations with the platform to share our research findings with others — and that’s critical to the preservation and protection of all the world’s resources.”
Students from the Tatnall School in Wilmington, Delaware, benefited from an unusual enhancement to their watershed education program. Nicklin joined these students on the White Clay Creek and shared his philosophy about photography’s role in environmental education — beginning their experience with a presentation of his work.
“Scientific work is important — and when what we learn is conveyed to society at large, it has the potential to make life better for everyone,” said Karen Barker, Life Sciences teacher at the Tatnall School in Wilmington, Delaware. “Tatnall School’s approach to the sciences has always been that we learn best by doing, so the experiential approach taken by the Stroud Center with its watershed education programs is a great fit. Our students are observing, thinking, and doing the work of scientists — and that’s really exciting.”
