ACS / SENCER Issues & Innovations

The SENCER approach to teaching science courses leads to an examination of problems that our society needs to address. If the questions that arise have a local connection, there is a great opportunity to transform the questions into an undergraduate research experience. This talk will illustrate how a selection of issues that arose in an introductory chemistry class led to actions that constituted aspects of undergraduate research. Examples to be illustrated include: impacts to surface water from chemical street deicers, lead and chromium in yellow curb paint, construction of a grassy swale parking lot at a WalMart facility and a re-examination of local bus service routes. In all cases, undergraduate students contributed to the solution of environmental problems in the community. Students remarked on the empowerment they felt through participation in the activities.

Civic Engagement project work can enhance student learning and undergraduate research projects are known as high impact practices. For Saint Marys' College students, the environmental chemistry course has a community based research (CBR) project incorporated into the lab curriculum to facilitate discovery and reinforce content learning. The civic engagement research can range from simple dissolved oxygen measurements to elemental soil screening (using field portable XRF). For effective research, students build proficiency with the instrumentation on a test site before addressing the community's site or issue. For all project work, students collect data, have a guided reflection, and communicate their results to the community partner. Embedding CBR in the curriculum expands the number of students who are introduced to research and yields a dynamic curriculum which benefits the students, the faculty and the community. Incorporating this civic engagement adds new access challenges yet the benefits for student learning outweigh the added work. Three illustrious examples are discussed highlighting both the benefits and challenges. Some student attitudinal responses were assessed as a portion of the evidence of student learning gains. The XRF soil screening work has also generated a new research area for the instructor and this added benefit will be highlighted.

Students and instructors of STEM both benefit when their courses and educational programs are connected to actual real-world problems, issues and opportunities that have local connections. Most textbooks of science and mathematics are written from disconnected and highly generalized global perspectives that are not always obviously applicable to students and faculty that use them as a resource. To overcome this disconnection, instructors can augment STEM courses for general science education and advanced science audiences with resources derived from partnerships that make use of more practical local and regional connections.æBy partnering with informal science educators and other entities connected to local and regional issues (e.g., zoos, parks, museums, businesses, government/non-government organizations) it is possible for instructors to breathe much needed life into their potentially stale course material. These same partnerships also potentially connect educational institutions with non-traditional funding opportunities, help in marketing of their program through news and media, as well as prepare students for job placement through research, internships, and professional networking.

In this presentation, attendees will learn how interdisciplinary general science and advanced discipline-specific STEM courses at Belhaven University have been enhanced through active partnerships with the Jackson Zoological Park, Wildlife Mississippi, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Tara Wildlife. These partnerships connect students and faculty alike with those organizations that have the strongest connections to important local and regional challenges.æ Even students who leave the region after graduation benefit from the experiences through their experiences which provide a template for how to work within local communities.æ Attendees will also learn how to craft agreements with local partners as well as navigate the complexities of engaging students of traditional lecture and laboratory based STEM courses in the "real-world." Specific perspectives and testimonials from local partner representatives will provide attendees with a clear perspective of how to nurture successful mutually beneficial agreements.