University collaborates with high schoolers to help complete biome project
Jun 29, 2022
From left to right: Dartmouth High freshmen Lucas Sao Marcos, Zachary Benoit, Sierra Arruda, and Zachary Amaral in front of the green screen they used for their project. Photos courtesy: Tracie Ferreira
Benoit goes ice fishing, one of many activities that can be done in a tundra biome.
Amaral goes skydiving.
Aurora Borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your studio!?
Arruda is stuck in the snowy woods.
Dr. Ben Viall gets things set up.
What do you do when the school year is ending and you have one week to complete an assignment and you have a great idea but no resources?
This was the exact situation Dartmouth High freshmen Zachary Amaral, Sierra Arruda, Zachary Benoit and Lucas Sao Marcos found themselves in when given a week to complete an assignment depicting one of the planet’s numerous biomes.
For their assignment, they were given the tundra, a tough draw with temperatures in the 80s this time of year.
What was this group to do? They problem-solved and decided they could record with a green screen and use computer software to impose their images into the Tundra.
The challenge: where could they get that green screen time.
After some searching, they reached out to Dr. Tracie Ferreira at UMass Dartmouth, a professor of bioengineering.
She immediately coordinated with the university to give the high school group the use of their Hall-Hildreth IDEA studio. Dr. Ben Viall set up the lights, while bioengineering master’s candidate Rebecca Ng supervised their time in the studio.
After more than two hours of recording, the quartet of freshmen submitted their assignment… and received an A!
“It’s a great community effort,” Ferreira said. “The university did everything they could to find time and resources for the students to get their project done.”
