McGann-Mercy Transforms Pond into 'Living Laboratory' for Students

After the McGann-Mercy Monarchs' baseball team won the Suffolk Class C crown just over two years ago, the squad sprinted toward a dirty pond on campus between the baseball field and Middle Road, jumping head first into murky waters in celebration.

Two years later – actually, less than a year after construction on the project started – that pond has been transformed into a cleared and clean working classroom, the result of nine years' worth of efforts to remediate the wetlands and use it as more than just a place to wash off after winning a baseball crown.

Mercy Principal Carl Semmler called the project a "threefold win" in its new form, in taking a pond and turning it into a functioning wetland, its role in naturally filtering runoff stormwater, and offering a place for other schools to come and learn hands-on.

Former principal and current Assistant Superintendent of Schools in the Archdiocese of Rockville Centre, Steve Cheeseman, started working on the project when he was with Mercy, and echoed Semmler's sentiments.

"We're not just giving students a pretty pond to look at," he said. "We're giving them a living laboratory. A place where they can learn hands-on about the principles of engineering and the theories of science in real life."

Group for the East End partnered with the school in a grant application it made to New York State's Environmental Facilities Corporation – which funded most of the $900,000 project. Senior Environmental Advocate Jen Skilbred and Environmental Educator Missy Weiss, along with science faculty at Mercy, led a handful of students once a week during the remediation process to help the project along, taking water samples, planting various native species, and removing invasive species which had built up over time. The nonprofit is also coordinating with the school moving forward to help develop curriculum around the wetland.

Officials said the wetland will be open to students from beyond Mercy, giving them a chance as well to take advantage of the courses developed on the eight-acre project, built up by Mercy alum Bob Terry, whose firm donated much of the in-kind hours required as a match for the EFC grant.