A Theme-Based Seminar on Environmental Sustainability Improves Participant Satisfaction in an Undergraduate Summer Research Program

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2008 by Grimberg, Stefan J, Langen, Tom A, Compeau, Larry D, Powers, Susan E

Researchers who mentor students include representatives from the disciplines of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. Usually, a mentor is limited to one student supported by the REU Site Program per year. Research projects are expected to contribute toward understanding and remedying important environmental problems.

Research is the primary activity of the Clarkson REU Site Program in Environmental Science and Engineering, accounting for over 85 percent of a participant's time (assuming a typical 40 hour work week). The research experience culminates in a public research symposium at the end of the program for which each participant gives a short talk on the results of their research. Each participant also submits a written research report to the mentor and a synopsis of the research is posted on the program's Web site (www.clarkson.edu/reu).

In addition to research, the program curriculum includes several research tools seminars and a variety of community building activities. A concurrent series of special topic seminars or workshops are held to improve REU participants' skills at conducting and reporting on research and on opportunities for graduate school. Each workshop is typically a single two-hour meeting with individualized one-on-one mentoring as follow-up. Workshop topics include: framing hypotheses, statistical data analysis, presenting a scientific talk, and Web page design. As a culmination of the latter workshop, participants create individual Web pages to report their research findings, and a collective group site to present the summer's auricular and recreational activities.

Besides the usual informal social activities that occur "after work" (e.g., sports leagues, barbecues), the Clarkson REU Site Program has included some formal activities for community-building and increasing awareness of the larger community. The first weekend of the program is spent at an outdoor retreat center in the Adirondack Mountains where students participate in activities designed to build trust and multicultural awareness and cause them to reflect on the leadership and collaborative skills needed to conduct research as part of a research team. Later in the program, participants are taken on three field trips to view efforts of environmental sustainability in the field, for example large scale municipal composting in Burlington Vermont, sustainable forestry practices for the fuel generation for a wood gasification power plant, and monitoring of environmental health at a Great Lakes Area of Concern by the Environmental Division of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe at Akwesasne.

There has been one substantive change in the curriculum of the REU Site Program, which was implemented after the first three-year period. A weekly seminar focused on environmental sustainability was added in 2002 (fourth year of the program) as a strategy to improve participants' awareness of the relevance and importance of their own research and that of others. Since all research projects focused on sustainability of environmental systems, the seminar provided a auricular center to the program that reinforced the REU Site Program theme while taking little time away from research activities (2.5 hours per week). The environmental sustainability seminar was led by William Vitek, an environmental philosopher and associate professor in Clarkson University's Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. Students read and discussed material on conceptual and applied issues related to environmental sustainability, and how multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in science and engineering may contribute toward attaining sustainable resource use (seminar readings have included Azapagic, Perdan, and Clift, 2004; Bednar, 2003; Capra, 2002; Costanza, Low, Ostrom, and Wilson, 2001; Dresner, 2002; Quinn, 1992; Weston, 1999). Each week one or two students were asked to lead discussions on selected readings of the assigned books. The students also discussed systems approaches to science and technology, cross-disciplinarity, and potential alternatives to current systems of science, economics, and values.