DHP Success Story: Michael Sean Chenoweth
Dr. John Dindo, Chair of the Discovery Hall Programs, and his staff of educators are delighted when they hear from graduates of their High School Summer School Program. They are especially pleased when one of their graduates has such a great story to tell about how DHP has influenced his life.

One such success story is Michael Sean Chenoweth, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Here’s his story, in his own words:

I attended the DHP, I think, in 1988. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I was incredibly excited to spend an entire month on Dauphin Island learning and exploring. My experience at DHP led me into the richly rewarding world of science. They, John Dindo and Jenny Cook, were great mentors and as I look back the program was fantastically designed. They kept an eclectic group of teenagers intellectually stimulated day and night.

 

 
I remember getting up at sunrise every morning hunting for shells on the various beaches around the fort. There was more beach around the fort back then because the erosion boulders had not been installed yet. I would record where I found certain shells and later identify them. The shell collection was my final project. I never could get anyone to go beachcombing with me in the
mornings which was long before breakfast. The other students nicknamed me "Sean the Shellman." The shell collection is still on the wall over in Discovery Hall. I dropped in and looked at it over the Christmas break recently.

As a side project, I measured several distances from the beach to several points on Fort Morgan and calculated how long it would take for the Gulf of Mexico to engulf the structure. Wisely the historic site has been impounded.

I am receiving my Ph.D. in geography. I am in the specialization of geomorphology, which is the study of landforms' evolution and distribution. I also have a technical specialization in satellite remote sensing and geographic information systems.

I email Dr. John Valentine periodically to inform him about developments in remote sensing of marine and coastal environments. Over the years, I drop in while at the beach and talk to Jenny Cook or whoever is around at the time. I am always looking for academic collaborators and would welcome any joint project with DISL in the future.

I live for fieldwork. I learned many of my skills of conducting fieldwork during the DHP.

My dissertation topic is The Biogeomorphology of the Jamaican Cockpit Country. I am a teaching assistant in the Geography Dept. of the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. I teach the physical geography and remote sensing labs. My research in Jamaica is in a rugged, karst landscape that looks like an egg-carton turned upside down. The core of the Cockpit Country, in Trelawny Parish, is uninhabited by humans. It currently is a Forest Reserve that basically protects itself due to the ruggedness and lack of water associated with karst terrains. I am combining satellite imagery and a digital elevation model to quantify vegetation patterns that occur on the various karst landforms. I have spent about 4 months exploring this landscape collecting field data to verify and classify the satellite images. I hire two local Jamaican Rastafarians to guide me through the maze of limestone hills and deep cockpit valleys. I am expecting to graduate this summer (2002).

DHP influenced my decision to become a scientist. It really was a life changing experience. I think it was the combination of great classroom preparation and even better field experiences that made the program extraordinary. Under our current teaching paradigm in the United States the field component of education is rarely experienced by students. Only a lucky few get the incredible opportunity we had in the DHP to collect biological samples and observe them in their natural environment.