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Nathan Tregger (Niantic, Conn.), who graduated cum laude with honors in civil engineering at commencement last Saturday, will present his research on water pollution at the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association’s 75th Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition June 22-25 in State College.
Recipient of Lafayette’s Carroll Phillips Bassett Prize in civil and environmental engineering, Tregger and collaborator Art Kney, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, will present results of the study they conducted on the Bushkill Creek Watershed through stream water monitoring, storm water collection, and a sampling assessment.
“I learned much about water quality and wetlands, which is an important part of the civil engineering field,” says Tregger, who will pursue a Ph.D. in civil engineering with a concentration in structural engineering at Northwestern University, which along with Johns Hopkins and Princeton offered him a graduate fellowship.
He worked with Kney through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students collaborate with faculty on research while earning a stipend. 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.
Tregger’s work with Kney over a period of more than two years has been “extremely important,” enabling him to write a grant for further study, according to the professor. Located in the Delaware River Basin of Northeastern Pennsylvania, the lower portion of the Bushkill Creek Watershed is being polluted by raw sewage and local industry, the researchers discovered.
They used data from several sources, including a volunteer monitoring program established three years ago by Kney and David Brandes, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, to determine the impact of changing local conditions such as population increases. Each month, students collect samples from eight locations along the main branch of the Bushkill Creek, spanning most of the watershed.
The researchers and a couple other students also traveled several miles on the Bushkill Creek by canoe and took about 20 samples every eighth mile. In addition, Tregger and Kney used information from a storm water collection program.
Tregger already presented his findings at the 16th annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research. His report calls for a reexamination of regulatory guidelines, noting that compliance still leaves room for significant water pollution: high conductivity, an indirect measurement of the level of dissolved solids, which block light and cause fish to leave the area or die; greater tubidity, the level of suspended solids such as silt and fine soil particles, which cover plant life at the bottom of the stream and affect eggs, among other problems; and high levels of fecal coliform, which are indicators of raw sewage contamination.
Also a mathematics major, Tregger earned honors in civil engineering through a year-long structural analysis of nuclear and coal-plant cooling towers in a hyperbolic shape under the guidance of Ed Saliklis, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Rob Root, associate professor of mathematics. He evaluated which changes in the geometric properties of these towers would provide the best resistance to buckling.
“In changing the geometry, I altered a parameter that controls how eccentric the tower is in the horizontal direction, looking either very squished or more like a cylinder,” says Tregger. “While changing this parameter, I tested how strong the tower is against collapsing under its own weight and under wind loadings.”
He completed extensive numerical simulations that incorporated variations in the thickness of the tower and showed the effect of human error on towers’ fabrication. He used computer programs like ANYSYS and Mathematica to perform these complex calculations.
“This project gave me a chance to study higher forms of analysis, including membrane and bending theory,” he says. “I also learned ANSYS, which will be very useful in graduate school. Essentially, the project helped me apply what I learned in class to new topics.”
Saliklis explains that Tregger gained practical research experience through “important and innovative” work.
“This type of research is highly unusual for an undergraduate engineering major, but Nathan is an exceptional student,” say Saliklis. “It has been a pleasure working with him. He defines the ‘Lafayette experience’ as I see it. Nathan’s acceptance to several graduate programs is due to the outstanding quality of this research and his tremendous academic record and list of accomplishments.”
Tregger says that Saliklis was a great adviser.
“He gave me guidance and feedback when I needed it, but mostly, he let me develop the project by myself,” he explains. “This gave me an opportunity to make the project what I wanted it to be, and also gave me good practice for graduate school.”
Tregger adds that Lafayette provides an ideal environment for this type of work.
“The research assistants at the library are wonderful,” he says. “They helped me obtain the many resources I needed. Most importantly, the professors spent a lot of time assisting me with the complex math and the Mathematica computer program.”
“I’m very happy with the civil engineering and math departments,” he continues. “The professors are very personable and make class enjoyable. They make students look forward to coming to class.”
Tregger was named one of the nation’s top undergraduate civil engineering students in the December issue of the national magazine CE News. He is among 34 students described in an annual feature called “Spotlight on Star Students.” The article recognizes the honorees as exceptional students and excellent candidates for employment.
He was a member of the Lafayette team that took first place for its design paper in the Pennsylvania-Delaware Region of the 2003 National Concrete Canoe Competition, and finished just one point shy of first place last year.
A participant in the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications, Tregger and his team earned Honorable Mention for work on a problem involving the ecology and survival prospects of the Florida scrub lizard.
He performed selections by Beethoven, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff during a senior piano recital last November; received the John D. Raymond Music Award, given annually by the music department; and played violin in the orchestra and chamber orchestra.