Biology students helped Mrs. Brehm identify the insects she collected for data while each class was learning about biodiversity.
Matthew Geiger and Abby Brehm are doing research projects to fulfill requirements for their master’s degrees.
Geiger, a physical science and chemistry teacher at Hastings High School, is working towards a master’s degree in Educational Administration.
“For the class I’m in right now we have to have a project where we identify a problem or something we see that we can probably fix in school, so I chose to talk about participation numbers in extracurricular clubs, sports, anything, and how we can probably link that to graduation rate,” Gieger said.
Gieger came up with the idea for his project mainly through collaborating with others, especially with Mr. Wallbridge. Gieger is an assistant wrestling coach, so he wanted to do a project that involved extracurricular activities.
“I had one problem identified that had to do with athletics and stuff, but they didn’t really like it, so I switched it up. I’m one of the coaches so participation and extracurriculars are pretty important to me, so I stuck with that idea,” Geiger said.
Geiger is collecting data for the project from a survey that was sent out to Hastings High students. Getting data for the project went okay according to Geiger, but he plans to send out the survey again in hopes of getting more responses. The survey can be found here.
“It was okay, not as well as I was hoping so we’ll probably send it out one or two more times just to see if we can get more, but as of right now I got I think 158 respondents,” Geiger said. “When you have 1100 kids, that’s about 10%, but anything was appreciated, so I can’t really complain.”
Balancing getting a degree with a full-time job hasn’t been too much of a struggle for Geiger. This year marks Geiger’s fourth year working towards his degree, which he started in 2019.
“It’s actually not too bad, it just takes your time,” Geiger said. “With most of the classes, you do something during the week and then on Sunday you have an assignment due so if I have an open or if I don’t have to grade I don’t have to worry about it at home.”
Mr. Geiger is getting his master’s degree online through the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but even though he isn’t attending classes on campus he is still making connection with others as part of his career.
“My favorite part of getting my degree is meeting some of the people that you’re going to probably work with,” Geiger said. “If I go on to be an admin, a lot of them are the people you’re going to be networking with later on in life, so just kind of making relationships.”
Additionally, Mrs. Brehm, a supported, general, and honors biology teacher at HHS, is also doing a research project. Unlike Mr. Geiger’s project, Mrs. Brehm is doing her project to complete the last requirement of her degree. This type of research project is often referred to as a thesis.
“You have to go through all of the steps of creating the hypothesis, doing the background research, collecting data, analyzing data, and then I’ll submit and I’ll have a panel that will judge my project and my results,” Brehm said.
Brehm is working towards a degree in biology, and her project analyzes the effects of biodiversity in field margins and if the biodiversity of plants and insects affects the amount of pests and predator insects in fields.
“My hypothesis was that if we had more biodiverse field margins, or areas next to cornfields, then we would have less pest insects like grasshoppers, cucumber beetles, aphids, things like that, and more predator insects, so more spiders, wasps, and pollinators,” Brehm said.
There were multiple criteria Brehm had when coming up with the idea for her project, including that her project incorporated biodiversity, a topic that. Brehm really enjoys.
“It was something I really liked, biodiversity, and it’s a project that I can do here that is meaningful to people that live here, and it’s something that’s doable by myself versus having to go to UNK and use equipment that I don’t always have access to,” Brehm said.
Collecting data didn’t go exactly how Mrs. Brehm planned, but she made changes from her original method of collecting data and was able to collect the data needed for her project.
Mrs. Brehm’s first idea for collecting data was to randomly set down a square of PVC pipe in the field margin and record how many plants of each species were inside the pipe, but that meant counting each individual grass which turned out to be too time consuming, so Mrs. Brehm decided to calculate what percent of the surface of the PVC pipe each species covered instead.
“That was a struggle because if you think about grasses, like I would have to count each grass so that quickly became an issue… so I had to make changes to collecting data and decide to do percent cover instead,” Brehm said.
Mrs. Brehm didn’t have to make as many adjustments for the second part of collecting data, which was collecting insects to determine the diversity of insects.
“The insects actually worked out pretty well,” Brehm said. “I didn’t have to make too many adjustments other than going through the field or the margin with the net was a little bit more difficult physically than I was kind of expecting, but it’s a nice workout so that was good.”
Mrs. Brehm takes one class per semester, and this is her fourth year working on her master’s degree. Balancing getting a degree with a full-time job while still prioritizing family has been the hardest part of getting her degree according to Mrs. Brehm.
“It’s pretty difficult. I think if it was just like teaching and getting my degree, it wouldn’t be terrible, but I have a family too so I have to prioritize them, and so I’ve taken breaks in getting my degree when I got married, or when we bought a house or when I had my daughter, I took a semester off so that way I could focus on those things,” Brehm said.
One of Brehm’s favorite parts of her degree is reading things she has written for classes she has taken for her degree.
“I’ve reviewed a lot of the literature and tried to summarize a lot of how biodiversity influences other factors,” Brehm said. “Going back and reading I’m like, oh, that’s pretty good, and that’s kind of fulfilling.”
Brehm’s favorite part of her research project has been sharing it with students as well as other community members.
“There’s someone at the extension office that I reached out to that helped and then I have a mentor that came out and hung out with me when I was collecting data, so sharing my project with some of my students and then some other community members was pretty cool,” Brehm said.
