by Chuck Gordon

Elizabeth Miles loves seeing young students learning outside of the classroom, especially when they’re getting an education in nature.

“You can’t ask students to protect our planet if they don’t have a personal connection to it,” says Miles, who teaches sustainable energy at Waxhaw Elementary School.

On Monday, Miles’ fifth-grade students, all 90 of them, got plenty of fresh air while learning about food webs and ecosystems from Wingate University biology students at Campus Lake. The two-hour activity demonstrates Wingate’s commitment to experiential learning and to working closely with community partners.

As part of an internship with Dr. Erika Niland, professor and chair of the biology department, six senior biology and environmental biology majors have been working since December on biology lessons for elementary-school students. The idea is to not only pass on their knowledge and love of science to younger students but to sharpen their communication skills.

“Science hasn’t always been the easiest to understand by the general public, so the more scientists can go out and explain what’s happening, whether it be the environment or not, is great,” Niland says. “It’s a really important skill set for them to have, no matter what they end up doing.”

With help from Niland, Miles and Breanna Walker from Union County Soil & Water, the students planned Monday’s lesson on how energy is transferred from the sun to plants to animals. The fifth-graders learned about different ecosystems (prairies, freshwater areas and forests) and what animals live in each. They were already well versed in the various organisms that live in these ecosystems (producers, consumers and decomposers), and they had little trouble answering Wingate students’ questions.

After a short introduction from Niland, the Waxhaw students separated into six groups and took off for a spot by the lake (freshwater), a wide grassy area (prairie) or a wooded trail (forest). There, they each answered a question from a Wingate student, such as, “This clever animal has a bushy tail and howls at the moon. It has sharp senses and usually travels in groups. With gray, brown, and cream fur, it blends into the forest. What animal is it?”

When they answered a clue, they received a laminated photo of the organism, which they hung around their neck. After rotating through each station, they used the photos as a key part of the culminating activity, which involved tossing a ball of yarn from “the sun” to producers, consumers and decomposers in order to create a “food web.” When one organism was removed from the web, the students were able to visualize what happens when part of a food web is disrupted.

“The yarn activity we did shows how each animal connects in that food web,” says Draco Clark, a biology major from Murrieta, Calif. “We showed that if one of them isn’t there, the rest of the organisms don’t get any more food and everything else gets out of order.”

The Wingate students were impressed with the fifth-graders’ preparedness.

“We did get our point across that you need the sun to start a food web,” says Aestas Hodge, a senior biology major who has minors in educational studies and environmental biology. “It’s the main energy source. And then it goes down to the producers and the consumers. I mean, these kids knew primary producers, secondary producers. They knew a lot more in depth than we expected.”

Hodge grew up in Waxhaw and attended Waxhaw Elementary, so the exercise was especially meaningful for her. She hopes to do an internship at the school next semester, before graduating in December.

“I love talking to kids and seeing the world through their eyes,” she says.

Miles was impressed with the Wingate students’ ability to connect with the younger students.

“Some people in this cohort are born educators, and they have found their safe space,” she says. “There are some who did a really good job and made sure to take it further.”

The six Wingate students aren’t finished with their internship yet. Although the Campus Lake exercise was the main event, later this semester they are slated to visit Waxhaw Elementary and talk to first-graders about the environment and potential careers in biology.

Niland says that the plan is to build on this year’s internships and do a Campus Lake activity with elementary-school students every year. This year’s cohort had to build the program from scratch.

“We built it from the ground up,” she says. “Moving on, we’ll make tweaks every year, and we can also expand it to have other elementary schools’ science programs come out here to do something like this.”

March 6, 2025