UWO student summer scientists mark 20+ years of keeping WI tourist waters safe

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh alumnus Noah Ryan '24, foreground, was captain on the UWO trash collection boat in the Manitowoc River in May 2023. The spring graduatewas hired by Fond du Lac County as its environmental health sanitarian.

For more than two decades, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh students have been spending their summers in Door County and other northeastern Wisconsin beach towns to make sure the waters are safe to drink and to recreate.

Bobbi Blahnik, a UW Oshkosh senior majoring in environmental studies, grew up wading in the waters of Door County. For six generations, her family has lived in the city of Algoma, about 20 miles away from Sturgeon Bay, where she works in the state-certified laboratory inside Crossroads at Big Creek.

"I grew up swimming at the beach, not really knowing what's in the water," said Blahnik, who is one of five interns who test the water samples from 38 beaches, from Door County to Washington Island. The interns who work from Memorial Day to Labor Day, report their findings to city and county officials about the levels of E.coli and other bacteria.

"What we do at the lab, she said, "can help keep the community safe."

Blahnik is responsible for 10 beaches, eight in Door County and two in Kewaunee. She logs 75 to 120 miles daily in her 2007 white Chevy Impala, but she's not complaining.

"My best friends from the track team are working with young kids and in an office this summer," said Blahnik, who is a thrower (shotput and hammer) for the UW Oshkosh Track and Field team, "and the fact that I get to paid to go to the beach every day…I love my job."

Uncharted Waters

UW Oshkosh has been at the front lines in keeping Wisconsin communities safe through the beach monitoring program. Greg Kleinheinz, chair of the department of engineering and engineering technology, recalls the public health crisis in Nicolet Beach that spurred UWO's involvement 22 years ago.

In July of 2002, 68 people became ill by E. coli bacteria after swimming in Nicolet Beach, which led county officials to shut down the beach during the height of tourist season. At that time, Door County had no beach monitoring program.

Kleinheinz, then only three years into his job at UWO, heard about the contaminated beach from the news, called the then-Door County Public Health Director Rhonda Kolberg, '79, BSN, to see how he could help. He offered water testing services, which Door County didn't have at the time. Kleinheinz and a couple UWO students would go to Door County several times a week to collect water samples and bring them back to the campus lab to test for contaminants. That was the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship between Door County and UW Oshkosh.

Greg Coulthurst, Door County Conservationist, remembers the difficult days of the beach shut-down in 2002. Without knowing where the contamination was coming from, the beach had to be shut down for a period, causing a ripple effect in the county's tourism industry.

"Water testing wasn't really on our radar at that time," Coulthurst said. "UW Oshkosh has been an invaluable partner. If we had the interns back in the day in Nicolet Beach, we would have saved a lot of people, a lot of sick time."

Allie McDonald, environmental health specialist in Door County, simply states, "Without the student interns, the beach monitoring program would not exist." Each summer before testing starts, McDonald takes the interns on a beach tour throughout Door County. "These student interns provide capacity that we as the County do not have,"she said. "The work the student interns do assures that residents of Door County have access to clear water for recreational enjoyment. This is such an asset that we are thankful for."

Experiential Learning and Problem-Solving

Kleinheinz said the summer internship gives students a new perspective in their studies. "The students get lab experience, they get field experience," said Kleinheinz, who visits the lab weekly times during the summer as well as many times throughout the year. "The students collect the samples, run tests and analyze the data. They feel like, wow, I'm really making a difference."

A year after the Nicolet Beach crisis, the beach water monitoring program began formally, with funding from various federal and state sources. Since its inception Kleinheinz has supervised the college intern program and data collection, and more than 150 students, many from UW Oshkosh, have worked in the state-certified lab that is housed at

Crossroads, a 200-acre nature education center in Sturgeon Bay. The interns, who are paid through a contract with Door County that originates from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources via the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act from US Environmental Protection Agency, receive a stipend and housing. They become part of the community for the summer, often answering questions from beach-goers about their work.

From the days where Kleinheinz and his two students waded into Nicolet Beach, the Door County Beach Program has expanded to four additional locations, two in Vilas County as well as Manitowoc and Oshkosh. They are staffed by 76 students from 11 colleges including students from all UW campuses and schools including Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan University. Today the Crossroads lab is open to the public and students work with the public and businesses to help them with drinking and surface water testing needs. In fact, in 2024 they started a drop-off and pick-up program for businesses and citizens on Washington Island to get samples analyzed in a more efficient manner.

Making a difference

Marissa Fleege, a senior majoring in chemistry from UW-La Crosse, was happy to land an internship in Sturgeon Bay. "A lot of my classes mimic field research," Fleege said. "Here, you are actually going out to the different beaches, collecting the samples, running the samples, doing the work yourself."

UW Oshkosh alumnus Noah Ryan '24, Environmental Studies, worked as a water monitoring intern in the summer of 2023. He and the rest of the interns were responsible for 52 beaches, collecting water samples and analyzing data. Ryan also worked as a captain on a trash collection boat, helping to clean Kewaunee and Manitowoc rivers.

"I would say one of the biggest take-aways from last summer was the idea that most environmental problems are systemic and are layered often in many complex ways that are entangled with human society, natural systems, and political systems," said Ryan, who after graduation landed a job with Fond du Lac County as an Environmental Health Sanitarian. "For example, microplastics in the Great Lakes are a major issue. Cleaning up the microplastics is very important, but just as important is asking questions about how those microplastics got there. Cigarette butts are the most common pollutant; therefore one could dive into this sociological rabbit hole of how cigarette smoking occurs at higher rates in lower socio-economic or under-resourced communities and how pollution levels are also elevated and mirror these rates. Anyhow, I learned a lot."

Blahnik, who has spent the last two summers interning in Door County, is soaking up every beach moment before she returns to UWO for class Sept. 4. As she carries her equipment - water bottles, anemometer for measuring wind speed, temperature probe, cooler to transport samples, daily beach data sheets - she reflects on the value of the beach water monitoring.

"The work is super important because it's a matter of public health," she said. "Our work helps keep these communities safe."

Learn more:

Study Engineering and Engineering Technology at UW Oshkosh

Study Environmental Studies at UW Oshkosh

UW Oshkosh receives over $500,000 from Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin to train next generation of water scientists

Trash collectors: UW students help clean up Wisconsin waters

Environmental Research and Innovation Centert (ERIC) at UW Oshkosh

UWO shows off remote trash collector during Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup Day

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