POTSDAM -- As part of a lecture series offered by the Laurentian chapter of the Adirondack Club, Clarkson students will offer a presentation on their Clarkson Adirondack Semester Integrated Research Project.

The presentation will take place at the Potsdam Civic Center Community Room at 7 p.m. May 7.

Nine students lived and studied together in Saranac Lake as part of the Clarkson Adirondack Semester program. They take 15 credits of coursework with Clarkson faculty to travel to Saranac Lake to work with the group.

The curriculum employs components of experiential education, undergraduate research, collaborative assignments and projects, writing-intensive courses, learning communities, common intellectual experiences and community-based learning. Students’ acquire content knowledge to analyze complex problems related to environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

The semester begins with a 3 week "Sense of Place" course, followed by two- 6 week blocks that run 2 courses concurrently. The final week of the semester, students present their Integrated Research Projects back on Clarkson’s campus.

During Spring 2017, students working with Dr. Jeanna Matthews and Dr. Annegret Staiger focused on Big Data in the Adirondacks.

Their presentation on May 7 will survey current large scale data collection projects in the Adirondacks and report on the students' own experiences collecting data of different kinds from ethnographic studies to business data to water quality monitoring.

They will reflect on the Big Data’s potential for good (e.g. providing facts that influence important policy decisions) and for ill (e.g. surveillance of individuals that is difficult to escape even in a place known for being forever wild).

They present ideas for future Adirondack Semester students to contribute to a long-term data collection project.