A Theme‐Based Seminar on Environmental Sustainability Improves Participant Satisfaction in an Undergraduate Summer Research Program

Abstract

We analyzed seven years of pre-program and post-program survey data to evaluate the Clarkson University Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site Program in Environmental Science and Engineering, and evaluated whether our program was successful at meeting the intended outcome of increasing participants' likelihood of attending graduate school and pursuing a career in science or engineering research or education. We also evaluated how participant satisfaction in the program changed with the addition of a weekly seminar on environmental sustainability that was intended to improve participants' understanding of the societal value of their research projects. Participant satisfaction in the Clarkson REU Program was high, and increased after the addition of the sustainability seminar. Participants' intention to attend graduate or professional school increased after participating in the program, but their intention to pursue a career in science or engineering research declined. Over 60 percent of participants eventually attended graduate or professional school.

Impact of a Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Research Program on Student and Faculty Perceptions of Creativity

“…In the context of the REU described by Grimberg, the students reported that the inclusion of the environmental sustainability theme made them more aware of the "value and greater context of their work." 13 Similarly, the REU being described in this paper emphasizes the creative process and its relationship with the scientific method as a broad theme of the program. To our knowledge, creativity has not been previously studied in the REU literature.…”

Lab-Scale Treatment Wetlands: A Model for Undergraduate Learning

“…One study shows that in addition to improving the relevancy of learning for all students, increasing contextual considerations may improve gender diversity in engineering [14]. In addition to project-based learning in the classroom, the contextrelevant nature of undergraduate research not only can allow students to develop a deep understanding of a technical topic or process, but also improve their research and professional skills [15]. It should be noted, however that these gains are relative to mentor involvement and effectiveness, and the nature of the work involved in the research: analyzing and evaluating data yields more gains than the act of following protocols [16].…”

Incorporating Sustainable Engineering Design Principles into Senior Design Proposals

“…Accordingly, the well-known ABET engineering accreditation criteria 1 requires engineering graduates should be able to "design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability." Engineering educators have been making every effort to educate the future engineers in sustainability and to prepare them with solid knowledge to deal with the sustainability challenges [2][3][4][5][6] . The related topics have been taught both as core engineering and general education 2 .…”

“…Typically, in an educational institution, it could be implemented in four levels: university-level with a strategic plan, school-or college-levels, departmental-levels or individual-levels. Various pedagogies and approaches are used in teaching sustainability in different engineering disciplines, e.g., creating an interdisciplinary seminar as a summer research program 5 , or integrating sustainability into all engineering courses incrementally 6,7 , etc. In general, it is agreed that integrating sustainability into existing courses might be a better way 8,9 .…”