Student Perspectives Shape Reports on Portsmouth, Paducah Cleanup

Paducah Innovation Hub student Jacob Hodge, left, explains his Student Annual Site Environmental Report research findings to Murray State University Assistant Professor Eric Batts. The university directed the Student ASER program while working closely with faculty and students from Paducah Tilghman High School and the Paducah Innovation Hub.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — High school students in Ohio and Kentucky, local universities and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) Portsmouth Paducah Project Office (PPPO) collaborated to develop and publish this year’s Student Summary of the Annual Site Environmental Report, commonly referred to as the Student ASER.

“The Student ASER is an opportunity to involve local students in science-based activities that are directly associated with their community,” PPPO Manager Joel Bradburne said. “It is just one of several PPPO educational outreach programs to boost STEM education and prepare a pipeline of talent to fill the jobs of tomorrow.”

The Student ASER provides a visual, condensed and non-technical summary of EM’s annual ASER, an environmental report that captures results from monitoring on and around PPPO’s cleanup sites. The goals of the Student ASER are to educate local high school students about cleanup activities at the Portsmouth and Paducah sites while they learn about potential career opportunities. They create two Student ASERs, one for the Portsmouth Site and one for the Paducah Site.

The Student ASER allows students to develop materials to facilitate conversations within their communities concerning environmental remediation as well as deactivation and demolition. To better understand the content, students work with subject matter experts, attend field trips and spend months learning about each site’s history and deactivation and demolition work.

Students participating in the Student Annual Site Environmental Report from Valley High School meet with Portsmouth Site contractors to discuss cleanup projects, potential careers and educational requirements.

In Ohio, Waverly and Valley high school students met biweekly throughout the current school year with guest speakers from the Portsmouth Site, Ohio University and the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, a community reuse organization, to learn about the site’s history and the safe cleanup progress to prepare the Portsmouth Site for future reindustrialization.

The students worked with Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service to create posters depicting sections of the ASER. The posters were then presented at a public academic expo.

“We had two schools working on the project this year: Waverly, which has supported the program several times throughout its 14-year history, and Valley from neighboring Scioto County, which was participating for the first time,” Federal Coordinator Greg Simonton said. “The longevity and growth of the program is a great example of how we are able to give local students educational opportunities that go beyond the classroom.”

Similarly, in Kentucky, students from Paducah Tilghman High School and the Paducah Innovation Hub visited the Paducah Site and heard from EM and contractor personnel while learning about the site’s history, current mission and future reuse plans.

In a first-time collaboration, those students worked with Murray State University personnel to produce the Student ASER. They also displayed their research findings via poster presentations to personnel from EM, Murray State University and the public.

“Murray State University laid a solid foundation in its inaugural year working with the Student ASER project alongside Paducah Tilghman High School and the Paducah Innovation Hub,” General Engineer Mitchell Guthrie said. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with the university as we take the program to new heights.”

The ASER is key to PPPO’s effort to inform the public about environmental conditions at the Portsmouth and Paducah sites and offers a detailed overview of environmental activities each year. Reports can be viewed on the PPPO website for both Portsmouth and Paducah.

-Contributors: Zachary Boyarski, Melissa Green