CURB Launches Year 3 of the EELS Team Internship
by Vivian Marko - SLC EELS Team Mentor
September 30th marked the start of this fall’s EELS Team Internship Program here at CURB. For the following semester, a cohort of 10 local high schoolers will complete an afterschool internship at CURB, culminating in research projects based on the students’ own findings. The EELS (Evaluating Estuarine Lateral Species) Team will complete research on the Hudson River, gain knowledge of the Hudson’s estuarine ecosystem, contribute to CURB’s multi-decade legacy of seining data, and curate academic skillsets.
CURB stands as an essential site of Hudson River access, and has provided hands-on educational programs, research resources and community outreach to the Yonkers area for over 12 years. As part of this mission to advance environmental knowledge and open opportunities for the local community, CURB annually hosts up to 150 environmental educational programs. In 2023, the EELS Team Internship Program joined this roster of programs, providing Yonkers high school students the chance to dive into college-level estuarine science.
The EELS Team’s fall semester is a continuation of this summer’s week-long College Ecology intensive, which students completed for 1 college credit. Students who completed the summer program are welcomed back for the fall, now as fully-paid CURB Interns! The fall 2025 semester kicked off with an orientation and a lesson on fish identification, followed by a round of seining in the river. Over seven weeks, the EELS Team will continue to collect regular seining data, contribute to community presentations of the Hudson River, get an introduction to eDNA research practices, equipment training, environmental testing, and more. At the same time, the team will attend seminars on Microsoft Excel literacy, resume building, and other professional skills. All of this research takes place while students organize their own research groups and focus on a specific topic of interest. Work completed in the fall feeds directly into the development of the team in the spring, when each EELS Team member will celebrate the culmination of their hard work through a public presentation, open to the wider Yonkers community.
The fall semester has kicked off to a great start: the EELS Team, as well as the supporting CURB staff, are eager to get their hands dirty and their feet wet (literally and figuratively) as we begin our descent into all this program has to offer.