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A Lafayette team of four students and two professors will spend six weeks in Uganda this summer, examining issues related to the wetlands surrounding Lake Victoria with peers there in a research program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The trip is part of an initiative that will include research on campus over the next two years and a second six-week collaborative research effort in Uganda next summer.
Students leaving for Uganda next month will be civil engineering majors Chad Yaindl ’06 (Emmaus, Pa.), a Trustee Scholarship recipient, and Rachael Oleski ’06 (Erie, Pa.); Trustee Scholarship recipient Jairo Amarillo ’05 (Bridgewater, N.J.), a double major in A.B. engineering and art; and Marquis Scholar Matt Root ’06(Benton, Pa.), a chemical engineering major.
Joining them in Uganda will be civil and environmental engineering professors Roger Ruggles and David Brandes. Also participating in the program as mentors for subsequent research projects related to the summer experience will be civil and environmental engineering professors Sharon Jones and Art Kney.All but Jones traveled to Uganda last July to meet with research organizations and university and government officials.
The Lafayette team will partner with a group of students and professors from Makerere University in Kampala to conduct four research studies investigating the interaction between wetlands and sources of agricultural and urban pollution. Technical assistance will be provided by the staff of the Fisheries Research Institute and Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project, two scientific research centers in Uganda.
The many goals of the project include establishing a better understanding of the function of wetlands and developing the students’ skills in conducting scientific research, presenting research results both orally and in writing, and understanding issues related to ethics in science and engineering.
The second-largest fresh water lake in the world, Lake Victoria has experienced a severe decline in water quality over the past 25 years, much of which can be traced to the population increase of its three bordering countries, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Deforestation and land development have degraded water quality through several factors: additional storm water runoff, which carries sediment and nutrients into the lake; greater volumes of sewerage; and increased food production, resulting in more fertilizer that makes its way into the lake and more development for agricultural production, which leads to sediment erosion that decreases the wetland area serving as a natural water treatment system.
Findings from the research will give scientists, engineers, and planners a greater understanding of the processes occurring in wetlands subjected to the stresses often found in developing countries, leading to development of effective strategies that can enhance the use of wetlands as natural resources. Farmers will have a greater understanding of the effects that reclaiming wetlands for agricultural purposes has on the lake environment. Research will also provide farmers with knowledge of the potential health impacts of heavy metal contamination of the crops grown in the wetland areas.
“Society at large will benefit through research that addresses environmental problems in rapidly growing population areas of developing countries,” according to the Lafayette professors. “Environmental degradation in these regions will eventually lead to decreasing food supplies and unhealthy living environments resulting in decreased life expectancy. This research will provide information to create a management tool to aid in maintaining and/or improving water quality and food production in developing countries.”
The interrelated research projects will be: 1) a study of wetland transition through a historical assessment of land use utilizing remotely sensed images; 2) rapid monitoring of the wetland lake interface on Lake Victoria; 3) comprehensive chemical, hydrologic, and sedimentation assessment of selected Kampala and Jinja wetlands; and 4) wetland construction research examining innovative agricultural techniques, treatment reliability, and hydrologic strategies.
The first study will involve development of a scientific database through sources such as satellite images and a geographical information system (GIS) laboratory at Lafayette funded by $366,354 National Science Foundation grant.
Through use of an instrumentation package under development at Lafayette, the second study will help the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project establish management strategies throughout the basin. The instrumentation package will be attached to a boat and have the capability to monitor test parameters at different depths. A global positioning system will be used to identify data collection locations.
The third study will collect water quality and hydraulic data from four wetlands in or near Kampala and Jinja to determine the wetlands’ treatment effectiveness and hydraulics, and the impacts of storm water sediment on them..
The team will construct a wetland as a research site at the Makerere University Agricultural Research Institute, Kabanyolo, in the fourth study. It will allow experiments on the best methods to control effluent flow into a wetland, the impact of farming encroachment on wetlands, and the use of wetlands and sediment ponds to control runoff and sedimentation from agricultural areas.
Through a Fulbright Grant, Ruggles taught courses relating to water resources at Makerere University for a year and conducted research there on the application of GIS technology in solving regional environmental problems. He involved two Lafayette students in his research through the Internet.
Ruggles and the other Lafayette professors involved in the Lake Victoria project have involved students in their research programs. Ruggles mentored Nathan Tyson ’04 (Easton, Pa.), who graduated cum laude in May with a degree in civil engineering, as the student mapped the bedrock topography of Northampton County as part of an intensive summer-long research project.
They collaborated as part of Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students collaborate with faculty on research while earning a stipend. EXCEL has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Kney involved six Lafayette students in an NSF-funded project in which they conducted a series of novel experiments to examine the combined effect of ion exchange and magnetic field techniques in the treatment of synthetic waste streams containing heavy metals. The work, which also involved Javad Tavakoli, associate professor and head of chemical engineering, and Andrew Dougherty, associate professor of physics, led to a groundbreaking testing technique called column chromatography as well as published papers and conference presentations in England and the United States.
Through an NSF grant, Kney spent the fall semester in England, where he continued his groundbreaking research on magnetic water conditioning, an environmentally friendly technology for treating industrial wastewater. This summer, Kney is using funds from the grant to send civil engineering major Jeff Chittim ’05 (Barrington, R.I.) to Cranfield University in England, where he will establish analytical techniques for measuring the presence of estrogenic compounds (e.g. pharmaceutical products such as birth control and steroid pills) in wastewater. Kney, Chittim, and others coauthored a paper on the influence of magnetic fields on water and wastewater treatment that was presented last fall at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) National Meeting in San Francisco.
Students whom Kney has mentored recently include Yaindl, who developed a written protocol on maintaining and using specialized equipment for the environmental research lab funded by the NSF grant; civil engineering major Joseph Goodwill ’04 (Camden, N.Y.), who was honored with a competitive research award from the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association for a paper he will present at PennTec 2004, the PWEA’s annual conference, June 27-30 at State College; biochemistry major Steve Presciutti ’05(Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), who presented collaborative research on contaminated water and treatment programs at the 18th annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research April 15-17; and chemical engineering major Teokor Quarcoo ’04(Accra, Ghana), who presented research on chemical-free water treatment at the AIChE meeting last November.
Chemical engineering major Paul Dimick ’05 (Quakertown, Pa.) is building on the findings presented by Presciutti through a collaborative summer research experience at Auburn University and will continue working on it next school year in a yearlong honors thesis.
Jones is serving as Faculty-Member-in-Residence for the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) program this summer. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other groups, WISE is ranked among the 100 best internship opportunities in the United States by Princeton Review. She used a NASA Summer Faculty Fellowship to conduct research last summer at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where she developed and used web-based, state-of-the-art GIS technologies for infrastructure management.
Previously, Jones developed GIS structures for the Tohono O’odham Nation in southwestern Arizona, which she continues to serve as a consultant. She incorporates her NASA and Tohono O’odham Nation work as she mentors Lafayette students conducting research, such as Nicole Joy ’04, who graduated in May as a double major in A.B. engineering and mathematics-economics. They collaborated in research last year through Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program, and Jones guided the student as she completed a yearlong research this past year that enabled her to graduate with honors in engineering policy.
Jones, Kney, and Chip Nataro, assistant professor of chemistry, supervised Joy and seven other students as they developed an inexpensive method of removing arsenic from drinking water in New Mexico. Joy and two of the students presented their findings last year at the 13th annual International Environmental Design Contest at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Joy also presented her work in April at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR).
Other students mentored by Jones include Nathan DeLong ’04 (Lebanon, Pa.), who graduated cum laude with an A.B. engineering degree and honors in engineering policy after conducting yearlong research evaluating cost-effective options for reducing the environmental impact of wooden pallets. He also presented his findings at NCUR.
In conjunction with Jones’ Engineering Policy and Design Course, Brandes led a group of students in Lafayette’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders on a trip to Honduras last month as part of a project to provide quality drinking water to four communities of the Municipality of Yoro
Brandes mentored three students in an investigation of the alleged export of pollution from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, which civil engineering major Kyle Moser ’06 (Pottstown, Pa.) presented at NCUR.
He partnered with civil engineering major and Marquis Scholar Michael Nilson ’05 (Wantagh, N.Y.) in research on the effects of rapid urbanization on stream flow in Southeastern Pennsylvania and areas of New York and New Jersey, which Nilson presented at NCUR.
In addition to mentoring and collaborating with a number of other students, Brandes teamed with Kney and the geology and environmental geosciences department on an NSF-funded project to monitor the health of the Bushkill Creek, which is being impacted by rapid development in the area. Presentations on the program have been given at the annual conference of the American Society of Engineering Educators and the American Society of Civil Engineers Conference on Water Resources Planning and Management.
Lafayette ranks No. 1 among all U.S. colleges that grant only bachelor’s degrees in the number of graduates who went on to earn doctorates in engineering between 1920-1995, according to the Franklin and Marshall College study “Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients.”
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Forty-two students were accepted to present their work at the last annual conference in April.