An Overview of Science on Seneca

What We are About

Science on Seneca (SOS) is an middle and high school educational outreach program of the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. It was established in 1986 by the faculty at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is based on the environmental study of Seneca Lake.

Science on Seneca has four objectives:

• To enhance the teaching of environmental science in area high schools

• To introduce students to environmental field studies using Seneca Lake as their laboratory

• To expand the Seneca Lake database using long-term monitoring of this Finger Lake

• To provide useful science content and standards based curricula for local and regional science teachers and students

Outdoor Classroom Experience

Science on Seneca enables regional science teachers to provide their students with an outdoor classroom experience on Seneca Lake using The William Scandling, Hobart and William Smith Collleges' 65 foot research vessel. To participate, science teachers must complete a day-long traing session to acquaint themsleves with the Science on Seneca Program and facilities. Two training sessions are held annually on Saturdays in the fall and spring. During the training, teachers experience the full range of scientific tests and equipment available to them aboard The William Scandling, including plankton tows, sediment samples and water chemistry, to name a few.  Visit the Finger Lakes Institute Web site to view the upcoming training dates. For a nominal fee of $15 per group, teachers may bring their classes back to Geneva to conduct aquatic and environmental research on Seneca Lake using the available resources on our unique floating classroom. Teachers can apply their experience from the SOS training to create hands-on, standards-based lessons and units for their students, or they may use curriculum and resources created by the Science on Seneca staff, which can be found on the Science on Seneca interactive Web site. The success of Science on Seneca is confirmed by increasing numbers of high-school students involved from one year to the next, groups traveling from any of 14 counties in the Finger Lakes Region.