Environmental lab helps undergraduates tackle cutting-edge problems

At the dedication ceremony for the new Environmental Lab in Hollister Hall May 5, Monroe Weber-Shirk, left, civil and environmental engineering (CEE) instructor, shows an experiment to, from left, CEE alumnus John McManus '68, from Procter and Gamble, and seniors Dave Susen and Joy Thaller. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By David Brand

Cornell has moved into the top leagues of undergraduate environmental research with the dedication of a $927,000 laboratory in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The lab is among the most advanced educational research facilities in the nation, with state-of-the-art equipment that allows students in environmental engineering to work on cutting-edge problems. The first group of 20 juniors and seniors recently graduated from the first course taught in the facility, described by instructor Monroe Weber-Shirk as "the class where you develop your own hypotheses and then design an experiment to find the answer."

The new lab, which was completed a year ago, was dedicated May 5 at a ceremony attended by members of two of the funding agencies, the DeFrees Family Foundation and the Procter & Gamble Fund, and by John Hopcroft, dean of the College of Engineering.

Len Lion, professor of civil and environmental engineering who helped shepherd the development of the new lab, explains that long ago Cornell had an undergraduate environmental lab, but the facility fell behind the times in safety and ventilation codes and the class was eliminated. A source of funds for a new lab appeared four years ago when the National Science Foundation (NSF) created a grant program for the purchase of instructional equipment. The DeFrees foundation made the application for this grant possible by providing the required matching funds. As the renovation of an old Hollister facility proceeded, the costs spiraled, but further grants from the NSF and Procter & Gamble, and support for the project by the College of Engineering, met the nearly $1 million cost.

Lion points out that although many students are drawn to Cornell by the strength of its research, "too often undergraduates don't get any taste of research." The environmental lab is helping change that. The students are given experiments to perform derived from current faculty research, guided by the researchers themselves.

As one example, Lion's research relates to how volatile organic chemicals move through the ground. From this he developed a laboratory module in which the students analyze a test box of soil to locate volatile contaminants.

Another researcher, James Gossett, professor of civil and environmental engineering, designed a problem related to his research on bacterial degradation of lignocellulose.

All of this experimentation is on modern instruments with names like pH/ion meters and gas chromatographs that come with their own instruction manuals. How, then, to teach the students to use the equipment without taking the entire course doing so? Instructor Weber-Shirk came up with the answer: He created a common software interface for the equipment that walks a student, step-by-step, through which dials to twist and switches to flick.