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Six students comprising this year’s Technology Clinic are researching potential improvements to the urban ecology of Easton’s West Ward. The team will present its mid-project report 4:30 p.m. Friday, May 9 in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights, room 104.
The team has also designed an entry for the international “Reinventing Grand Army Plaza” competition, an initiative focused on generating ideas for the redesign of Grand Army Plaza in New York City. Three prizewinning entries will be chosen by a jury and one additional prizewinner will be selected by the public in a web-based Community Choice Award competition. All award winners, along with a selection of other top entries, will be exhibited from Sept. 13 – Oct. 14 in an outdoor exhibition on Grand Army Plaza.
Tech Clinic is a hands-on course founded in 1986 that brings together students from different majors to help solve real-world problems of a business, non-profit organization, or government body.
The students involved with the project include English major Sean Gerrity ’09 (Cranford, N.J.), international affairs major Stefanie Wnuck ’10 (South Windsor, Conn.), electrical and computer engineering major Mike Cuomo ’09 (Wyckoff, N.J.), art major James Castelluccio ’09 (Stamford, Conn.), geology and English double major Alysia LeComte ’10 (Greenwich, Conn.), and economics and business major Angela Pflug ’10 (Berkeley Heights, N.J.).
Urban ecology deals with the interactions of plants, animals, and humans with each other and with their environment within urban settings.
“Such things affect communities in areas such as water run-off, waste cycles, heat generation, and energy flow,” explains Dan Bauer, professor of anthropology and sociology and Technology Clinic director. “It also has a large impact on the appearance of a community and is in many ways symbolic of how the people of that community feel about where they live.”
The students have been involved with the project since the beginning of this semester and will continue through the fall semester. They are working with the West Ward Neighborhood Partnership (WWNP).
Working with the students are Gary Bertsch, Tom Jones, and Lucienne Di Biasi of WWNP, as well as William Dohe, head of R+D Architecture in Easton and co-facilitator of the project. Dohe has worked with Lafayette students on several Tech Clinic projects.
The students’ research so far has involved taking soil samples and sending them to Pennsylvania State University for analysis, as well as learning GIS (geographic information systems) software.
“One of our major goals is to connect the West Ward neighborhood with the escarpment and the Lehigh River front,” Bauer says. “We want to find ways to make the West Ward feel more like part of the wider natural world.”