Building An Active Environmental Chemical Engineering Research Program With Undergraduate Students

With a University-wide theme of “learn by doing”, all Cal Poly undergraduates are required to complete a Senior Project. Environmental Engineering students are encouraged to conduct an experimental or an applied design project to fulfill this requirement. Students who select new faculty members as their advisors frequently find themselves in the midst of an on-going chemical engineering based environmental research project. Since a student’s time allocated for Senior Project is limited to the equivalent of four quarter units spanning a two quarter sequence, I have developed several procedures to facilitate the assimilation of students under my direction into these on-going projects. These procedures represent a unique combination of bringing research into the classroom, developing applied research skills in both lecture and laboratory courses, interactions with collaborative research groups, and individual instruction. The results have been promising with one student going on to win the national Air and Waste Management Association (AWMA) award for the best student paper. Several other students are either planning to or have gone on to pursue graduate engineering degrees in either chemical or environmental engineering.