Lake Erie Is Northeast Ohio Students' Ultimate STEM Classroom

A middle school student steadies a rowing shell along the mighty Cuyahoga River. Another one checks wind direction before raising a sail. They aren’t thinking about fluid dynamics, force vectors or watershed science. Yet they’re experiencing all three.

“Take a child through a forest, and watch how they start thinking about the habitat around them,” says Mike Trebilcock, co-founder with his wife, Gina, of The Foundry. “Draw an analogy to the river and lake. When they open their eyes, they’re seeing a completely different environment.”

This philosophy took a major step forward in June with the opening of the Patrick S. Parker Community Sailing Center at Cleveland Metroparks’ East 55th Street Marina. It expands access to rowing, sailing and an array of STEM-centered programs.

“We believe the water is for everyone,” says Trebilcock.

And Lake Erie is the ultimate learning lab — it’s one of Northeast Ohio’s most dynamic classrooms. Across the region, educators, scientists and community organizations are bringing STEM to life through hands-on exploration and discovery.

“What we’re trying to get across is the natural resource, the cultural resource, the economic resource and the drinking water resource that Lake Erie is to us,” says Mary Rouse, director of outdoor experiences for Cleveland Metroparks.

Current Events 

A fish flops in a metal bin as students drop to their knees for a closer look. One eagerly reaches for a scalpel. Another peers into a microscope at plankton no bigger than grains of pepper. Across the room, someone lets out a “Whoa!” while watching minuscule heartbeats inside the transparent organism.

This is Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island, and its programs transform Lake Erie into a hands-on STEM classroom. 

Operated by Ohio State University in partnership with Ohio Sea Grant, the island field station welcomes about 2,700 students each spring and fall for immersive field experiences that take learning from textbooks to research vessels, laboratories and the lake itself.

Students spend time aboard research vessels collecting fish and plankton before bringing their discoveries back to the lab.

“We see lots of giggling, oohs-and-aahs and screaming,” says Chris Winslow, executive director of Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Lab. “It all happens.”

Some have never seen a fish up close, let alone dissected one.

“We learn about how to identify the body parts in different species, and they get a real look inside at what we pulled up from 25 feet below the boat,” he says. 

As for those funny floaters dredged up from below, “If it’s something transparent that’s been eating algae, they’ll see a little green line through the organism as the algae moves through its stomach,” Winslow points out to students. 

They witness a real speck of lake life at work. 

“They realize the lake has a color to it,” Winslow continues. “When you put the water in a jar, that greenness, those are little plants growing in real time.” 

For many, it’s their first trip onto the lake.

“Stone Lab is a life-changing inflection point in many of the students’ lives,” he says. 

Those experiences help students understand the big and the small of the Great Lakes, Winslow points out. Together, they hold about 20% of the world’s surface freshwater, and the way we behave around our watersheds matters. 

“What we do on the landscape and what runs off our parking lots goes into that lake and alters that ecosystem,” he says. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure. If we can get more kids and adults on the water and craving that information, we can do good things with these Great Lakes.”

Reading the Water 

At The Foundry, students don’t just learn to row or sail. They learn to read the wind by watching ripples on the water. They feel how waves affect a boat’s movement.

“With sailing, there are a lot of choices to make when you’re on the water,” Trebilcock points out. 

Students experience firsthand how weather, physics and engineering work on the lake.

“What we’re doing at a macro level is growing awareness,” he says. 

Since opening in 2016, The Foundry has grown from a community rowing program into an organization that introduces thousands of students to rowing, sailing and environmental education through its Row. Sail. Dream. initiative. 

This summer, that mission expanded with the opening of the Community Sailing Center, creating new opportunities for year-round STEM programming. It includes two indoor sailing simulators.

“In effect, students can participate in a digital regatta involving wind, the current and environmental conditions,” Trebilcock says. “We are gamifying the sport and growing their interest to get out on the water.”

The Community Sailing Center, developed by Cleveland Metroparks and operated in collaboration with The Foundry, serves as what Trebilcock calls “the front door” to a growing network of partnerships. Organizations including Ohio Sea Grant, the Great Lakes Adventure Scouts and others are using the facility to connect students with sailing, STEM learning, water safety and environmental stewardship, he says. 

“All of this lends itself to a great environment to give more people access to the lake,” Trebilcock says. 

Growing a Connection 

Cleveland Metroparks wants the lake to feel like everyone’s backyard. 

“We only value what we know,” says Rouse. “Our goal is to create connections with Lake Erie.”

The Metroparks is closing this gap through a growing lineup of immersive programs centered on Euclid Beach. For the past four summers, the park district has hosted a six-week STEM camp designed specifically for youth in the East Cleveland and Collinwood neighborhoods. Supported by a three-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the effort is expanding to include after-school and weekend programming, along with a new school-based initiative, My Great Lake, which will pilot in 10 Cleveland schools this fall. Students will raise sunfish in their classrooms, monitor their growth, study Lake Erie’s aquatic ecosystems and release the fish into the lake at the end of the school year. 

In many ways, the goal is to create a sense of ownership. 

“We live on a Great Lake,” Rouse says. “There’s a beach,  kayaking and fishing.”

A sign of watershed improvement: Rocky River offers some of the best steelhead trout fishing in the state.

“They are coming back upstream to spawn because our water systems have become so much cleaner, and we are getting species here we didn’t see 30 years ago,” Rouse says. 

Water Wise 

Lake Erie is a lifelong happy place for Erin Huber Rosen, who grew up in Mentor hanging out at Headlands Beach State Park.

“I got angry when I saw litter, and it led me to take action later in life,” says Huber Rosen, recalling her father always rooting for the underdog. She decided it was the environment. 

So in 2010, she founded Drink Local. Drink Tap. The nonprofit uses education, advocacy and hands-on experiences to connect people with the importance of clean water. This happens through its Wavemaker program, beach cleanups and community partnerships that engage thousands of people in learning about water quality, conservation and environmental stewardship. And it’s ultimately inspiring the next generation of Great Lakes advocates.

There’s a global component, too. Through partnerships in Uganda, the nonprofit works alongside communities to improve access to safe drinking water while supporting hygiene education and sustainable water solutions.

So far, the organization has performed 220 beach cleanups.

“It’s a gateway to get people up to the lakefront, have them give back and connect to being part of the solution,” Rosen says. 

Along with this are classroom experiences to talk about global water issues and our own Great Lake. During school programs, Rosen videoconferences with participating Ugandan classrooms. On the lakefront at home, cleanups open eyes to individual impact.

“Kids are picking up objects like straws or plastic forks they use in daily life, and they make a connection: If I don’t use them at all, I will not pollute the lake. I can make a difference.” 

One lesson involves kids bringing in an old T-shirt. They make a reusable bag. It’s not tech-heavy, but it’s hands-on. Rosen calls these realizations a soft side of STEM.

“It’s all very simple stuff,” she says. “But it gets kids to think about reuse and
 repurposing.” 

Science, Underground 

Beneath Cleveland’s streets lies another kind of STEM classroom — one that most people never realize exists. A couple of hundred feet below the city, engineers have created a network of massive tunnels designed to protect Lake Erie and the rivers that feed it. During heavy rains, the tunnels temporarily capture stormwater and wastewater that would otherwise flow directly into local waterways, holding millions of gallons until they can be fully treated and safely returned to the lake. 

The work is part of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’s Project Clean Lake, a decades-long effort that combines engineering, geology, environmental science and construction on an enormous scale.

For Doug Lopata, project manager for Project Clean Lake, the tunnels tell a bigger story about STEM in action. The region’s cleaner waterways aren’t the result of a single invention but thousands of engineering decisions happening out of sight, from designing tunnels through solid rock to managing water flows and upgrading treatment plants. 

All this ultimately results in a healthier watershed and cleaner lake.

Students exploring the shoreline today benefit from science and engineering that began long before they arrived. For decades, people were advised not to eat fish caught from the lower Cuyahoga River. In 2019, following significant improvements in water quality, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency eased that restriction. Just as important as the engineering, Lopata says, is helping people understand that every stream, storm drain and catch basin is part of a larger network.

“We want to educate everyone about how all those catch basins connect, whether you’re in Parma at Big Creek or close to the lake. It’s all part of the same water system,” Lopata says. “What we throw down the drain or catch basin eventually has to get cleaned out so it isn’t released into the lake.”

For a Goodtime, All Aboard

For many Northeast Ohio students, their first close-up look at the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie happens aboard the Goodtime III. School field trips have been part of the company’s mission since its earliest days, says Captain Rick Fryan, whose grandfather started the cruise business.

Today, the narrated two-hour cruises introduce about 6,000 students each spring to the waterways that shaped Cleveland’s history.

“It’s one thing to read about it,” Fryan says. “It’s another to experience it.”

As the boat passes towering freighters, lift bridges and industrial landmarks, students learn how the Cuyahoga River, Ohio and Erie Canal, and Lake Erie transformed Cleveland into a manufacturing powerhouse. 

For many children in third through
fifth grade, it’s also their first time on a boat.

“The memory is ingrained,” Fryan says. “It’s their first experience with the river and the lake, and they remember it.”

At Work in the Watershed

When it came time to complete his Eagle Scout project, rising University School senior Theo Walter, 17, wanted to do more than plant trees. So he partnered with the Doan Brook Watershed Partnership, fellow Scouts and students from Green Corps and helped restore a stretch of Doan Brook while learning what it really takes to improve a watershed. 

Why Doan Brook?

“I didn’t want to just plant a bunch of trees randomly. I wanted to make sure we were thinking about what would actually help restore the ecosystem.”

The biggest lesson?

“You can’t just plant a tree and call it helping. There’s a lot of research behind it. You have to understand what’s native, where trees belong and what will actually improve the watershed.”

What surprised you most?

“I thought organizing a project like this would be really difficult. It wasn’t. There are a lot of people who want to help.
That made me wonder why we aren’t doing even more. Part of my goal was teaching my Scout troop why we were planting these trees. If people understand how their actions affect the watershed, they’re more likely to get involved.”

Your advice?

“The hardest part is just starting. Once you take that first step, there are people who will help you make it happen.”

Look Closer

At the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, seeing the ties between species is the first step toward protecting them.

 A guided hike can teach us to see relationships in nature.

“People notice the connections between things — between species, between species and habitat — that they might not otherwise see or understand,” says Ken Schneider, administrative coordinator for research and collections/natural area at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The museum protects more than 12,500 acres in northern Ohio.

Not just a flower

“Seeing bees or butterflies hovering around a flower might seem a fairly routine observation,” Schneider says.

At Mentor Marsh, for example, the native turret bee depends on swamp rose mallow for nectar and pollen, while the flower depends on the bee for pollination.

“All these things — water, wetland and soil, turret bee and swamp rose mallow,” Schneider says, “are intimately connected.”

Follow the water 

“The connections are easy to understand because we’ve seen how water moves,” Schneider says.

Rain falls, streams swell and water eventually reaches Lake Erie, carrying everything from nutrients to pollutants along the way. “We immediately understand that a pollutant will move, disperse, dissolve, flow,” he says.

Nothing exists alone 

“Species rely upon other species to survive, and all species rely on habitats,” Schneider says. “Wetlands, forests and dunes don’t simply support wildlife — they connect entire ecosystems, including our own.”

Step into nature 

“When you immerse yourself in the natural world, when you hear it and smell it and feel it, take off your boots and wiggle your toes in it. That’s a real thing,” Schneider says. “It’s the beginning of something like love.”