On a hot morning in June, Dr. Amelia Atwell, assistant professor of biology, led a group of Wofford student researchers into a patch of forest in East Spartanburg where a narrow section of the Halfway Branch stream runs by a little league baseball field and a neighborhood pool.
There, they tested the quality of the water in the stream — a tributary of Lawson’s Fork Creek — with various instruments. One of them is a new high-tech device that the biology department purchased thanks to recent donations to the Department of Biology Excellence Fund.
The Yellow Springs Instruments digital water quality meter gives Atwell’s team a nearly instantaneous reading of key water quality measures. She says it’s a major improvement from cheaper devices that have previously been used.
“The YSI does everything all at once — temperature, pH, conductivity and more — and it’s a lot more accurate than the handheld instruments that cost a few hundred dollars each, which often throw errors,” she says.
The meter is at the center of faculty-student mentored research being done by Atwell and her team of two student researchers: Sam Brathe ’27, an environmental studies major from Fort Mill, South Carolina, and Mary Fields Spratt ’28, an environmental studies and Spanish double major from Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Students from other related research groups also have assisted. Jayden Loftis ’27, an art history and environmental studies double major from Greer, South Carolina, and Lucy Klein ’28, an environmental studies and Spanish double major from Louisville, Kentucky, helped with data collection at Halfway Branch.
The student researchers are testing the YSI meter against other methods like the Hanna pH and Conductivity Reader and the Adopt-A-Stream citizen science method. (Atwell, a certified Adopt-a-Stream volunteer trainer, certified all students and professors who have aided in this project.)
“The idea is we can compare all these to see how accurate one is over the other,” Atwell says. “Are the less expensive ones semi-accurate compared to the YSI or not? Some of the citizen science methodology is qualitative, like looking at a list of colors and matching, so how does that methodology compare?”
They are also collecting aquatic macroinvertebrates at each site, which serve as bioindicators of the water quality.
The YSI device and its assorted probes, which were purchased using excellence funds, cost nearly $9,000. These academic excellence funds were formally launched in 2023 and provide philanthropists with a department-specific giving opportunity for each of the 25 academic departments on campus.
Atwell says donor generosity has a far-reaching impact, noting this tool will be applied in many ways beyond her research.
“This YSI meter is being used in the classroom, in the lab and in the field,” Atwell says. “Biology classes are using it. The environmental studies department has borrowed the YSI. There are chemistry professors who plan to use it. These donations are crucial and go a long way to give our students the best academic experience.”
If you would like to give to an Academic Excellence Fund, click here and select your department of choice under the “designation” tab.