ULERN promotes partnerships.

Working alongside research scientists in studying how forest herbicides impact fish habitat or mapping out previously. uncharted northern rivers is the learning opportunity of a lifetime for students involved in an environment-based partnership program.

The Upper Lakes Environmental Research Network (ULERN) is moving ahead by leaps and bounds in their efforts to promote partnerships between Sault College and research and industry players for research and development projects in the natural resources and environmental spheres.

Margo Shaw, ULERN's director, says through their 11-member partners, the Sault College-based initiative has accessed more than $5 million in federal and provincial research dollars in the last five years and provided more than 120 student and intern jobs placements.

"The involvement is just a tremendous advantage to our students that they can put on their resume," says Shaw, by rubbing elbows with researchers and resource managers while doing actual field work as part of their course requirements.

About 29 students from the school's natural resources, water resources and geographic information systems programs were hired on in the past year for wage-subsidized projects. And as many as 100 students, says Shaw, work on a project-by-project basis at any given time, either in paid positions or as volunteers.

Their membership group includes the local offices of the Canadian Forest Service (CFS), Environment Canada, Fisheries and Ocean, and the Ontario Forest Research Institute (OFRI) combined with industry partners in Great Lakes Power, St. Marys Paper and more recently forestry giant Tembec.

"Tembec is a very forward-thinking company," says Shaw, in signing a five-agreement with OFRI and CFS to collaborate on research. "They've realized the value of working together with govenment agencies."

The program was formed back in the mid-1990's when college officials and a number of government research departments huddled to discuss ways to overcome government funding cuts to research.

ULERN and its partners have put up about 20 per cent of funding in devising the research work, while the lion's share has come from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust. Those agencies recently chipped in about $4 million for Sault College and its ULERN partners to study the impact of hydroelectric dams on river systems and in understanding how forest ecosystems respond to climate change.

Other projects include an Environment Canada-Sault College effort to study the effects of estrogen and sewage on immature fish. Through a model sewage treatment plant at the college, researchers discovered a 'gender bending' occurrence where treated estrogen compound in sewage resulted in a feminization of young fish.

"We believe we're the first in Canada to do that," says Shaw, "though it's been documented in Europe in wild populations.

"We're also building a a flow-through bioassay facility allowing us to do more sophisticated testing on estrogen and many other compounds."

This research and other projects will be sbowcased on March 28 when ULERN is planning a Celebration of Science event at the Sault's Water Tower Inn. Dr. Roberta Bondar, Canada's first women in space and a Sault native, is scheduled to be guest speaker before an audience of dignitaries from Industry Canada, Human Resources Development Canada and the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology.