This summer, Biochemistry senior, Travis Ashley is working in the environmental center at Anne Arundel Community College. Here’s his description of what he’s doing: “Mostly what we do is microbial monitoring in the bay around the Annapolis area, which involves a lot of filtering of bay water, plating on selective media, and counting bacterial colonies. One of my tasks this summer is to help develop an enzymatic method to determine phosphate concentration in samples. In fact, in the picture I have included, I’m in the process of running that reaction. It’s mostly lab work, which is great, but some weeks I get to go out on a boat around downtown Annapolis and Eastport to collect water samples which is pretty fun.” Travis is having a great summer and loves applying his biochemistry background to developing the enzymatic assays to monitor the bay.