From science research to lifeguarding to volunteer work, teens on the South Fork kept themselves busy exploring their interests and making a difference in their communities.
Talk about a summer well spent.
For Ava Walters, a senior at East Hampton High School, it meant spending two weeks at the University of Pennsylvania’s O’Connor Lab Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, a cancer research program. Among the tasks she performed were replicating DNA and selecting a plasma suitable for the lab’s ongoing research, working alongside the laboratory staff and with Dr. Roderick O’Connor, her mentor in East Hampton’s Methods in Research program.
“All of the tasks I did were new to me,” said Ava, who is planning to study biology in college and pursue a medical career. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the lab environment, but I loved it.”
Ella Moeller, a Ross School senior, became a volunteer steward with Back to the Bays, a program of the Cornell Cooperative Extension that restores aquatic habitats with eelgrass while educating the community. She learned about the program through her science teacher at school, Hazel Wodehouse, but felt inspired by living near the water. “I saw how much of an opportunity living on Long Island provides for me. I drive past these waters every day and swim in the ocean and bays.”
She had never worked with eelgrass before. “It was really interesting and educational to see what our local waters need to flourish and how this [organization] is working toward bettering the environment,” Ella said, describing a hands-on process. “I learned that I enjoy being part of a local community that cares about the health and sustainability of the environment. I learned that I really care about the future of Long Island and what it will look like when I’m older.”
She also kept herself busy volunteering for ReWild, another environmental group, working for a pony camp in Bridgehampton, and helping teach ceramics classes for adults and children. While she wished she had more time to spend lazing on the beach, she did have fun doing yoga and working on her own ceramics projects, which will form the basis for her senior project this year at Ross.
Cole Dunchick, a junior at East Hampton High School, worked with his father to revive a project he began during the pandemic in 2020. “Many Montauk fishermen lost their restaurant business due to the pandemic, leaving them without income,” Cole said. “Knowing some of them from our fishing trips, we decided to help by buying seafood from them and selling it to local families. This effort became Dunchick’s Dock, a charity where we sold fresh seafood at market value and donated the proceeds to the Montauk Food Pantry.”
Four years ago they raised $20,000 for the Montauk Food Pantry while selling more than $70,000 in fresh seafood to families here. This summer, Cole raised $3,000 and plans to donate it to the Springs Food Pantry, for which his mother is a volunteer. “I look forward to continuing this work throughout the school year and growing it in the future,” he said.
While this was going on, Cole also interned with the University of Miami under Dr. Milan Curcic, his mentor in East Hampton’s science research program. There in the laboratory, Cole worked with a 38,000-gallon wind-wave tank “capable of simulating extreme conditions, from tropical storms to hurricanes with 160-mile-per-hour winds, sea spray, and storm surge.”
“Dr. Curcic generously shared his time and expertise, equipping me with the tools I needed for my research project,” including the Python coding language, Cole said.
Milla Campomar, a senior at Sag Harbor’s Pierson High School, challenged herself in two ways. Not only did she become a certified ocean lifeguard in nine days flat, but she also spent a week at Vanderbilt University in Nashville exploring astrophysics, specifically the emerging area of dark matter research.
“I really love learning a lot of different things. The natural sciences have been really interesting to me,” Milla said while sitting on a bench at Pierson two days before school started this week. The program at Vanderbilt “showed me that I don’t want to go into astrophysics, but I definitely want to continue learning physics in general. I love how it helps me understand the world better.”
In her week there, Milla — who is a student in Pierson’s academically rigorous International Baccalaureate program — made new friends while studying the theories surrounding dark matter. “It made me so excited to learn that there are so many things about the world and the universe that we don’t understand. So much is yet to be discovered,” she said.
On the beach, she initially began lifeguard training to support a friend, but quickly fell in love with it. “The head lifeguard said they needed more lifeguards, and that he thought I could do it,” said Milla, who passed the ocean certification test on July 13 despite fog, rain, and red-flag conditions. “I learned that when I set my mind to something, I can accomplish what I want. . . . I felt myself grow stronger in so many ways.”
Alex Frolich, a Ross School senior, interned with the Anchor Society, a nonprofit organization based in East Hampton. He described his work as “ethnographic research on East Hampton and how people use the village,” which involved a deep dive into the archives of The Star and the creation of a system for the digitization of the group’s research. And he had the chance to assist a City University of New York professor with research into social enterprises — meaning businesses that produce quality products for a good cause, such as Bombas and Thrive Cosmetics. “We are currently drafting a research paper,” Alex said.
Rowan Cooper, another Ross senior, packed her summer with volunteer work for Concerned Citizens of Montauk and A Walk on Water, which teaches surf lessons to children with learning disabilities. She also worked as an assistant ceramics teacher for Beau Rush and made beach-inspired jewelry through her job at Below the Blue Boutique. All of these experiences, she said, will be useful for her senior project at Ross this year.
“I loved being involved with my community this summer and getting to learn more about how Montauk is combating environmental issues like erosion, water pollution, and other climate issues,” Rowan said. “It is great to be able to connect with people through art as well.”
And Stella Peterson, another East Hampton senior, investigated the theoretical feasibility of geothermal heating and cooling systems for East Hampton High School. “Last summer, with the help of my mentors, I was able to calculate the size of a drilling region and the depth at which it would occur,” she said. “This summer I calculated how many boreholes would need to be drilled as well as the COP, which stands for the coefficient of performance.”
It spoke directly to her interest in the science of sustainability, and she now plans on combining this with architecture in college next year. “I feel as though if more people were to put plans together to seriously determine the steps that would be necessary to switch to renewable energy for all kinds of infrastructures it would be more common,” she said.
For the most part, the students were able to carve out time for fun. Despite logging 90 hours of lab work, Stella still went surfing, hung out with friends, and did plenty of reading on the beach.
“I still managed to have a great summer,” she said