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In the fall of his sophomore year, when Timothy Gocke ’05 (Wallingford, Pa.) sat down for his first environmental biology class at Lafayette, he didn’t believe it would be a serious science course.
Gocke, a biology major, soon learned that the course, taught by Nancy McCreary Waters, associate professor of biology, was quite challenging — and fascinating. In fact, Gocke became so serious about environmental biology that a year later, he was one of 18 students from throughout the United States studying aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems science with some of the world’s experts on the subjects at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
Past Lafayette participants in Woods Hole include Gabriella Engelhart ’05, Amie Aguiar ’04, Elizabeth Westgate ’01, and Laura Heberlig Lautz ’98.
“It was a very science-intensive semester,” Gocke says, explaining that students in the Semester in Environmental Science (SES) program spent their mornings learning theory from prominent scientists and science writing from professional science journalists, then spent each afternoon gathering data in the Cape Cod area and analyzing them in the laboratory.
During the first five weeks of the 15-week program, the students studied a site at the Falmouth Sewage Treatment Plant, where sections of forest are sprayed with treated effluent as an alternate form of disposal. The group compared that site to an adjacent site with similar forestation where the effluent is not sprayed.
“We could compare species composition, the level of nitrogen, the amount of liquid that got into the ground, even the weight of the leaves,” he says. “I have never seen another place like it.”
Gocke adds that the group also conducted research in Waquoit Bay and other aquatic ecosystems in the bay’s watershed.
Finally, he says, he conducted independent research in which he compared trophic levels (those of organisms occupying the same position in a food chain) in four different water systems — a forested river, an abandoned bog, an active bog, and a restored bog.
“It was an intensive, this-is-what-you’re-going-to-get-into program,” Gocke says. “What it’s done is help me figure out what I’ll be doing in my career and in my future.”
Gocke acknowledges that Waters’ environmental biology course first opened his mind to new possibilities.
“It was truly the subject matter and how she presented it that changed my mind,” he says. “Before that I had very narrow thinking. The most I’d do is turn off the water when I was brushing my teeth and yell at people who left it on.”
Gocke adds that a Lafayette environmental panel discussion recommended by Waters increased his interest and led him to speak to Dru Germanoski, professor and department head of geology, who showed him a videotape about the Woods Hole program.
Gocke says that he also has been influenced by a marine biology course taught by Charles Holliday, professor of biology, and the neurobiology course taught by Elaine Reynolds, assistant professor of biology and neuroscience program chair, in which he is currently enrolled.
In addition to his studies at Lafayette and Woods Hole, Gocke, a graduate of Strath Haven High School, spent last summer and the past two January interim sessions as a neuroscience intern at the University of Pennsylvania. On campus, he’s a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity and plays intramural flag football.