Institute for Watershed Studies Research Assistant

The IWS conducts water quality research on bodies of freshwater and for some of their projects they collaborate with local government, and other organizations on water quality issues. I first learned about IWS from a job listing for their summer research assistant position, which entailed doing in the filed sampling of around 60 small lakes in the area, and also doing some lab work with those water samples. At the time I was taking a Watershed Biogeochemistry class at WWU, and my class was able to take a tour of the IWS labs and learn a little bit about what they do there. I was interested in their work, and I was familiar with water quality techniques, so the summer job sounded like a great opportunity to me