Keck-phase-1-description

6. Overview:

Provide an overview of this field and the need for this project.

The fundamental goal of this proposal is the development of multidisciplinary curriculum modules and research projects that incorporate computational methods to study an environmental problem of local significance. There have been repeated calls for both multidisciplinary collaborative education and research as well as the incorporation of computational methods within the curriculums of other science disciplines. In 2005, PITAC called for funding agencies and educational institutions to “make coordinated fundamental changes to their research and education structures to promote and reward collaborative approaches essential to computational science." Both the “Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research” and BIO2010 reports stress the need to have interrelated science curricula and research. Research and curriculum models that study the fate and transport of metals in the environment require a multidisciplinary approach with a significant emphasis on computational methodology. These studies involve field methods, instrumentation and computational methods that are accessible to undergraduates and can be incorporated both in student-faculty collaborative research as well as course modules across the curriculum. Therefore, this area is an ideal topic for training our students to develop multi-faceted approaches to problem solving.

7. Relevant Efforts:

Describe past and current efforts at your institution that are relevant to this project.

There has been a long tradition of Earlham science faculty involvement in multidisciplinary and computational student/faculty research. Additionally many of our science faculty have worked with local environmental issues. In the last 20 years, faculty members in biology, geology and chemistry have been engaged in studies ranging from atmospheric measurements of mercury and aquatic ecosystem studies at the college's Dewar Lake Biological Research Station to determination of metal contamination in lake sediments. Across our science curriculum, a strong emphasis is placed on quantitative, analytical and research-based projects. Many of our research projects engage our student/faculty teams in multidisciplinary efforts; currently, our computer science faculty and students work with both biologists and chemists on computational projects. e.g. computational phylogenetic reconstruction and molecular dynamics simulations. For many years, our biology and chemistry departments have collaborated on a variety of research and curriculum projects, e.g. determination of atrazine concentration from agricultural runoff in local water sources and its effect on the physiological development of aquatic species.

8. Peer Groups:

Many institutions have recognized the need for innovative approaches to science education at the undergraduate level. Carleton College has established an Interdisciplinary Science and Math Initiative (CISMI) aimed at integrating the physical sciences and mathematics in undergraduate courses and research projects. Our proposed project shares a similar mission to the Carleton program; however, one significant difference in our program is the emphasis on computational science methods throughout the curriculum. In addition, our curriculum modules focus on inquiry in disciplinary-specific courses, especially at the introductory level. Trinity University is also focused on interdisciplinary faculty and student research as well as interdisciplinary curricular development with their recently funded Keck Center for Macromolecular Studies; however, Trinity’s program has a major focus on the integration of biology and chemistry, while our proposed program uses biology, chemistry, geosciences, mathematical, and computational science methods to explore environmental problems. Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania has implemented an Interdisciplinary Watershed Research Laboratory for field-based environmental laboratories. This project is similar in scope to our proposed project, but primarily integrates biology and geography/earth science, while we are proposing to involve more disciplinary perspectives.

9. Goals and Methodology:

State the major goals of the project and summarize the methodologies and time frame to be used in achieving them.

The major goal of this project will be to firmly entrench a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving in our students, faculty and curriculum. An additional goal is for students to experience the power of computational science in modern scientific research. A third goal is an extensive study of the fate, transport and toxicity of metals in our local watershed. We anticipate that the process and structure we develop as a result of this proposal will provide a framework for future multidisciplinary environmental studies at Earlham College that may move beyond the study of metals.

Curriculum modules relevant to this proposal will be incorporated into 6 introductory courses and at least 7 upper level courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. To illustrate how traditional topics can be introduced in an innovative way using this environmental project as a unifying theme, we propose to incorporate a new environmental chemistry component into our general chemistry class. This unit will introduce students to fate and transport modeling of metals by measuring the distribution coefficient commonly used to estimate the concentration of metal pollutants in aqueous systems. An example of a lab module in an upper-level hydrogeology course will involve a complete hydrogeologic characterization of the research site. Students will use laboratory sessions to collect samples, determine aquifer properties, and quantitatively determine baseline metals concentrations in the research site in a process meant to simulate an actual research investigation. Hydrogeology students will work with students who have an emphasis in chemistry and computational science to develop protocols for performing environmental fate experiments, chemical analyses, and equilibrium speciation modeling.

During the academic year, students taking courses that include these modules will be strongly encouraged to participate in a weekly, faculty facilitated seminar in which they will discuss their course experiences. We anticipate that this will evolve to become a required course for all science majors at Earlham. At the end of each semester, students participating in courses that have these modules will be required to attend and present their group projects at a locally hosted poster session.

Initially, the summer research component will involve developing and testing curriculum modules. In summers two and three, students will have the opportunity to conduct actual research related to metals in the environment. Avenues of inquiry will include analyses of metals in a variety of environmental matrices, descriptions and quantifications of food chains and computational modeling of rates of biomagnification of metals at higher trophic levels, performance of whole-soil hydraulic conductivity tests and determination of soil mineral reactivities, and computer modeling of biochemical and groundwater processes. Students participating in summer research will have two opportunities each week during the research experience to discuss the multidisciplinary perspectives related to their projects: faculty from all departments will facilitate a weekly seminar for all students and, in addition, students will meet weekly to discuss their research projects in a student-led seminar.

• Timeline
  • Spring 2007 - Purchase and installation of equipment, and course module and seminar development
  • Summer 2007 - Course module and seminar development, student/faculty research
  • Academic 2007-08 - Initial implementation of course modules and seminars
  • Summer 2008 - Course module and seminar development, student/faculty research
  • Academic 2008-09 - Continued implementation of course modules and seminars
  • Summer 2009 - Course module and seminar development, student/faculty research
  • Academic 2009-10 - Continued implementation of course modules and seminars

10. Institutional Resources:

Describe institutional resources and/or strengths that will be used to achieve the goals.

Earlham College has an unusually cohesive science faculty. They come together in weekly divisional meetings to discuss and share many intra-divisional interests. Their teaching philosophy strongly emphasizes collaborative student-faculty research, both within courses and co-curricular activities. Science faculty and students come together every fall semester to present their research at the Earlham Annual Research Conference. Their close collaboration has led to the recent granting of several multidisciplinary awards/grants such as a Merck/AAAS grant for interdisciplinary summer research (2002), HHMI (2000), and an NSF-MRI for a 400-MHz NMR spectrometer (2002). These successes, as well as the College’s commitment to supporting the faculty’s efforts in securing external funding, have resulted in an impressive list of scientific equipment, unusual for a college of our size.

The quality of the teaching and learning experience at Earlham has also been demonstrated in the outcome of science alumni. In 2000, Earlham ranked eighth among 1302 institutions of higher learning in the Biological Sciences category of the Baccalaureate Origins Report.

11. Impact:

Describe the potential impacts of achieving these goals.

Approximately half of the graduates in the sciences at Earlham are women, and all the departments serve a considerably larger population of science and non-science students. The college’s general education requirements will ensure that nearly every Earlham student will take at least one of the courses that contain a multidisciplinary research module before they graduate. Science majors will further benefit from taking multiple module-integrated courses and from participating in the summer research opportunities.

An important artifact of this project will be further development of Earlham's Environmental Studies program, which is largely staffed by the same faculty that would be a part of this work. Because this project will impact the local community, we will hold an annual poster session on-campus for the public in which faculty and students will present their results. We believe this innovative approach of combining classroom scientific inquiry, summer research projects, multidisciplinary discussion, and community participation will give our students and the wider community a unique opportunity to engage in truly modern and authentic collaborative science.

12. Fundraising:

Explain what other sources of funding have been sought, what amounts have been committed (including institutional funding), and the plan for raising the remainder.

We are requesting that WMKF, with institutional support from the College, fund this pilot project. The College has committed $167,049 in combined cash and in-kind resources as start-up funding. We are embarking on a capital campaign that has a goal of building a $3 million endowment for science faculty/student research as one component. We believe that a WMKF investment will serve as a catalyst for major gifts from alumni, friends, corporations and other foundations.