This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Although the funding period for a $100,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant is coming to an end, Art Kney, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, plans to continue teaching the collaborative educational experience the grant helped provide.
The project, which introduces students to methods of designing water treatment systems for present and future contaminants, is both intercollegiate and multidisciplinary in nature.
For each of the last three years, Lafayette civil engineering students enrolled in the Design II course worked with a biology class at Lehigh Carbon Community College and an environmental science class at DeSales University.
During the three-week course module, learning communities were formed at each school. Students listened to interdisciplinary lectures from guest speakers and engaged in case study discussions, laboratory exercises, and collaborative group work through the internet.
“The instructional module focuses on the emerging national and global environmental problem of increasing levels of estrogen in wastewater,” says Kney. “It is an adaptation of a research technique using a recombinant strain of yeast as a test for estrogenic chemicals.”
Estrogen is an endocrine disruptor, a family of drugs which cause abnormalities in human and animal reproduction by replacing hormones. Estrogen can be introduced into the environment through agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical sources.
So far, about 70 Lafayette students have been involved with the project. Both Lafayette and DeSales students and faculty have done additional research and presented nationally and internationally as an offshoot of the project, including an independent study done by Maura Scolere ’05.
A workshop is being planned for an NSF conference in the spring of 2007, as a result of the collaborative efforts from all three institutions. Kney anticipates more research and educational publications in the near future.
Funding for the project through NSF started in the summer of 2003 and is ending this summer. Kney believes the course module has been a success and he is planning to continue it after the grant is exhausted. Though, he is not yet certain how funds will be generated to cover the cost of expert speakers and face-to-face student interaction.
“We believe that the student experiences presented in our project have been beneficial and add to the critical body of knowledge needed for students to be successful after graduation,” says Kney. “We also recognize value in intercollegiate student interaction through academics; an alternative avenue to the generally accepted intercollegiate sports interactions.”