Myriam Hibbard (center), who teaches 10th grade marine biology at John D. O’Bryant High School in Roxbury, with (from left) Brighton High School ninth-grader Peter Nguyen and Nativity Preparatory eight-grader John Tran, participate in a bird bioacoustics field study on the Brighton Campus on July 25. More than 65 students, primarily eighth- and ninth-graders from five Boston-area schools, are taking part in Boston College’s annual Summer Institute on Urban Ecology and Information Technology, two weeks of classroom instruction and hands-on field studies. The goal of the institute is to foster student interest in science and technology careers and empower them to be stewards of the urban environment. Before the institute began, nearly 50 of the students’ middle- and high-school teachers attended a preparatory workshop taught by Boston College graduate students and faculty. The institute is a collaboration among Boston College’s Urban Ecology Institute, the Lynch School of Education, and the Environmental Studies Program, and is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education.