The Tucson Chapter of the Arizona Hydrological Society (AHS) is pleased to announce our 2021 AHS Undergraduate Mentor Scholar. Our warmest congratulations go to Stephanie Serrano.
Stephanie is a sophomore at the University of Arizona who is pursuing her B.S. in Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, with an emphasis in environmental hydrology.
Stephanie attended the U of A Sky School in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The program provides place-based and inquiry-based science education programs to Arizona K-12 students, merging a wide variety of science and engineering disciplines. Programs focus on core U of A science areas such as sky island (isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments) ecology, geology, hydrology and astronomy. The Arizona Hydrological Society Foundation provides financial support to this program, and AHS is excited to see that the program resulted in Stephanie’s introduction to and subsequent pursuit of a degree in hydrology
Stephanie was a 2019 recipient of the BIO5 Institute’s “Keep Engaging Youth in Science” (KEYS) Research Internship Program. The KEYS internship allows motivated Arizona high school students with a strong interest in bioscience, engineering, environmental health, data science, and biostatistics to work with top University of Arizona faculty on research projects. Stephanie worked with Dr. Leif Abrell at the Arizona Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants (ALEC) on a research project called “Emerging Contaminants in Harvested Rainwater; Recovery from Solid Phase Extraction for LC-MS/MS Analysis” as part of Project Harvest.
Project Harvest is a co-created citizen science project that collects and tests rainwater from across the state of Arizona with the goals of understanding the fate and transport of potential pollutants in harvested rainwater and how these possible pollutants might impact soil, plant, and human health, and to evaluate the learning outcomes of a citizen science and community-engaged approach to research.
Stephanie tested 11 organic contaminants in harvested rainwater using solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to determine the water quality of the samples. She also conducted a side project to test and understand the efficiency of SPE between two different mass spectrometers. As a result of this internship, Stephanie was hired by the lab as a student worker, where she continues to work and expand her laboratory skills and knowledge of different analysis methods and equipment. Through her lab experience, she has become very interested in perfluorinated compounds (PFAS).
Stephanie is interested in using the AHS mentorship experience to help determine her interests in a career in hydrology, and in learning more about local hydrology projects. Stephanie will attend a minimum of four water-related meetings and will prepare a summary of those meetings in collaboration with a mentor. She will also submit a short article to the AHS monthly newsletter describing her school experience in 2021, including how COVID-19 affected her school year.
Stephanie will receive the Tucson Chapter’s 2021 AHS Mentor Scholarship Award and plaque in a more formal ceremony to be held in Phoenix/Tempe in September during the 33rd annual AHS Symposium, which will be held from September 15-17, 2021.