Alyssa Robert, a rising senior at the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School, once thought she couldn’t drink the water in Dallas.

“I thought it wasn’t clean,” Alyssa says. “But I learned that the water cleaning process is held to such high standards that the water sent to our homes is 100% clean and can be drank.”

A collaborative initiative between the University of North Texas and the city of Dallas is providing local high school students and recent graduates like Alyssa with education and hands-on experience in water purification and conservation.

This summer, 10 rising seniors and recent high school grads participated in the Dallas Environmental Education Initiative (EEI) high school internship program, where they learned about clean water production, the importance of protecting natural resources and how to perform college-level research under the guidance of UNT faculty, staff and students.

The program even provides opportunities to current UNT students such as Krystal Toney, a doctoral student in Rudi Thompson’s lab who is basing her thesis on the program.

“I’m studying the disparity of environmental education programs and that impact,” says Toney. “I’m also looking at the importance of diverse perspectives in these programs. EEI helped me find that topic.”

EEI was founded by Interim Dean of the College of Education Rudi Thompson in 2005. It aims to provide environmental education to all students in Dallas, especially in underserved communities. Along with the internship program, it provides water conservation education to Dallas students in elementary and middle school. Every school year, the program also holds a research summit for high schoolers.

“The city wants us to make sure their citizens  are environmentally literate,” Thompson says. “With our interns, we take that idea and do even more to help prepare them for college.”

For instance, students in the program must go through an interview first. The team coaches them on interview attire and the importance of an appropriate email address. The interns also experience life at UNT by having lunch at Bruce Hall and touring campus.

During the 5-week internship, the group engages with university professors and explores their research. Associate professor Edward Mager in the College of Science showed them his lab, which studies how chemicals in the water affect fish. Thompson meets with each intern to discuss their future career goals.

“I told her I was interested in environmental law and she connected me to an environmental lawyer,” says Patrick Adão-Pérez, a recent graduate from Bishop Dunn Catholic School. “In that meeting, she showed us the importance of networking.”

More than 150 students have gone through the program since its founding 18 years ago. Many continue working in environmental research.

“We have one young man who has gone on to be an assistant professor at Stanford working in environmental science,” Thompson says. “We encourage our students to do anything they want to do, and it was sweet when he reached back out and said, ‘thank you for believing in me.’”

The program includes practical fieldwork, with students performing their own research by placing leaf packs at Lake Tawakoni and the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA). A leaf pack is a bag of leaves from the area left in a creek or at the edge of a lake. After three and two weeks respectively, the group returned to retrieve the packs and study the number of microorganisms living on the leaves. Despite challenges, such as dried-up water at Lake Tawakoni and washed-away packs at LLELA, the interns adapted by using natural clumps of leaves from the stream.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting this when I first applied, but it was fun,” says Adão-Pérez, who collected leaves from the stream.

By measuring the number of microorganisms in the leaf packs and cross referencing it with the species’ pollution tolerance, the students were able to determine the level of pollution in the stream. They gave it a pollution tolerance index score of 97 out of 100, indicating it has high quality water.

Participants then visited water and wastewater treatment plants in Dallas to understand the processes involved in producing clean drinking water.

“I was amazed at the complexity and extensive process involved in making water safe to drink,” says Rayna Li, a senior at The Hockaday School. “The number and power of filters, machines and systems that are used to treat and clean the water is mind-blowing.”

Their findings and recommendations for next year were presented at the Dallas Central Library to employees of the city’s water conservation division and guests from Dallas ISD. The interns answered questions from the audience and shared their experiences during the entire internship.

“Any student could benefit from this program,” says Brayden Brown, a recent graduate of Wilmer-Hutchings High School. “My favorite part was learning about trickle filters. It’s when layers of rock are used to clean water, like how waterfalls naturally purify water. It’s really cool how nature influences our water technology, and I think it’s something everyone should know about.”