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<\/p>\nCLEVELAND \u2014\u00a0Students from all over Cuyahoga County filed onto a ferry at Kelley\u2019s Island for a trip that blurred the line between education and recreation. For some students, it was their first time on a boat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so excited to come out to Kelley\u2019s Island and, like, be on a boat,\u201d said Reya McLellan, a student headed into her senior year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s part of the newest cohort of \u201cFreshwater Fellows,\u201d a group of Cuyahoga County high school students who applied to be a part of an ongoing educational program run by the Freshwater Institute.<\/p>\n
This is the second year of the Freshwater Institute, a county-led initiative to help create the next generation of freshwater stewards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Kelley\u2019s Island Trip occurred during their \u201cImmersion Week,\u201d an itinerary of hands-on educational outings designed to connect the students with real-life examples of topics they had explored in the classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the ferry, they broke up into teams in order to collect water samples at different depths and test the water for various \u2018vital signs.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Students conduct water testing on Lake Erie. (Spectrum News 1\/Corey O’Leary)<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking at everyone\u2019s data, make sure we got all the numbers recorded for the various tests that we were doing,\u201d said Olivia Slocum, a Freshwater Fellow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slocum said being part of the program has helped her understand how vital Ohio\u2019s waterways are to the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt surprised me how many jobs rely on Lake Erie, not just in conserving it, but also when it comes to manufacturing, social aspects,\u201d she said. \u201cAll facets of our economy are somehow tied to the lake.\u201d<\/p>\n
By providing the students with hands-on, immersive learning experiences, those lessons sink in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always talk about glacial grooves and how they\u2019re formed, well guess what let\u2019s go walk on them, let\u2019s go experience them,\u201d said Ebony Hood is the Director of Syatt, an educational nonprofit that helps create the Freshwater Institute\u2019s programming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hood said the hands-on nature of the trip helps students learn what sort of careers are available in the \u2018blue economy,\u2019 a term for jobs relating to bodies of water.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a beautiful lightbulb that goes off, and it\u2019s like, \u2018Ah, this is why this is amazing.\u2019 You can literally see it before your very eyes,\u201d Hood said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since Jan. 2026, the fellows had been meeting outside of school to learn more about the region\u2019s freshwater bodies. By the time immersion week happened, some were friends already; others had friendships forming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019re part of a cohort, there\u2019s like a brotherhood and sisterhood thing,\u201d Hood said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The program brings together students from all around the county. Whether they go to a public, private or home school, they all received a stipend for the time they spent in the program, opening up doors for students to apply that would normally have to work outside of school.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Immersion Week saw them tour water treatment plants, visit Niagara Falls, and go kayaking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/fresh.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Freshwater Fellows gather on Kelley’s Island Glacial Grooves. (Spectrum News 1\/Corey O’Leary)<\/p>\n
\u201cJust learning things that you wouldn\u2019t be learning in school. Because we\u2019re really connecting with our community, school really isn\u2019t about that,\u201d Slocum said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The students saw firsthand how the water around us shapes our lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really important, to kind of have a sense of identity and a sense of pride in your community and where you live,\u201d McLellan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The program is meant to instill curiosity about the world and open their eyes to potential careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow they\u2019re asking questions, they\u2019re looking at systems, they\u2019re learning about the blue economy,\u201d Hood said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McClellan said the program sparked curiosity about the region’s water history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI read a book and learned there used to be a swamp in Northeast Ohio,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they cleared that out, it really affected the health of Lake Erie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, McClellan said she hopes to become a wetland conservationist or go into horticulture after high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lake is our most vital resource here; it\u2019s a very limited resource, and it\u2019s a very rare resource to have freshwater just in your backyard. And I think there needs to be every effort made to preserve it and every effort made to understand it and to respect it,\u201d Slocum said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The program had its first cohort in 2025, and those students were invited back for a second year of programming, with a majority of them opting to come back. For this class of 2026, the option to return is also on the table.<\/p>\n
For McLellan, it\u2019s not a hard decision to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, absolutely,\u201d McLellan said when asked if she planned to return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014\u00a0Students from all over Cuyahoga County filed onto a ferry at Kelley\u2019s Island for a trip that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[292,54541,54539,227,136,138,137,139,293,54540,295,25636],"class_list":["post-231609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-app-top-stories","tag-corey-oleary","tag-ctv","tag-education","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}