Browsing by Author "Butkus, Michael"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Engaging Students Through an Interactive Mass Balance Fundamentals Demonstration
    (ASEE, 2020) Wallen, Benjamin; Butkus, Michael; Sheehan, Nathaniel; Ng, Andrew; Pfluger, Andrew
    Employing mass balance concepts is one of the fundamental approaches to address many of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges of the 21st century. Of the five stated grand challenges, the incorporation of mass balance principles is central to understanding and resolving four of the five technical challenges while it supports and informs decision making in the fifth. For burgeoning environmental engineers, the understanding of mass balance concepts is foundational for recognizing and solving the complex multimedia environmental problems they will face. Environmental engineering curricula therefore requires students to fully understand and demonstrate proficiency in the application of mass balance concepts. Unfortunately, many students struggle to initially visualize key aspects and understand assumptions used with the mass balance approach. A five-minute demonstration provides a visual, interactive classroom experience that improves understanding and learning for a broad spectrum of students’ learning style preferences. The approach presented in this paper has been successfully used in an introductory environmental engineering course taught predominantly to non-engineering majors as part of a three-course environmental engineering sequence. Current data suggests that the incorporation of this demo improves student understanding of mass balance concepts evidenced by improved quantitative testing scores over the past two years. Though longitudinal data is forthcoming on the efficacy on long term retention, we strive for each non-engineering major in the sequence to be able to more broadly contextualize and solve complex problems using mass balance principles by incorporating a deliberate systematic approach. Indeed, for our students to tackle the grand challenges of this century, they must be able to understand the inherent interconnectedness of global and regional environmental systems.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Location, Location, Location: The Value of Disciplinary Adjacency in Enhancing Environmental Engineering Programs
    (ASEE, 2019) Dacunto, Phil; Butkus, Michael
    Since the field was largely born out of civil engineering, most of the initial environmental engineering degree-granting programs began in civil engineering departments. Many have stayed there. However, 10 of the last 25 environmental engineering programs accredited by ABET have emerged in other departments. The rationale for aligning environmental engineering programs with other disciplines can be based on numerous factors including diversity of perspectives within the department, collaboration opportunities, facilities requirements, and efficiency. This study examines the distribution of ABET-accredited environmental engineering programs across departments, to include specific program adjacencies and trends over time. In addition, the study examines faculty perspectives on the departmental alignment of environmental engineering programs, to include the faculty’s overall satisfaction with their program’s adjacencies, and the advantages and disadvantages of its particular alignment. Furthermore, it examines faculty perspectives on the program adjacencies that they believe would be most useful, as well as the reasons why. These faculty perspectives can be used to inform the actions of academic institutions who are forming new environmental engineering programs, or those considering a program realignment. In addition, they can inform faculty in existing programs of potential inter-program collaborative possibilities, regardless of which department currently houses their program.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Technical Communications in an Environmental Engineering Curriculum: A Framework for Analysis and Continual Improvement
    (ASEE, 2020) McCollum, Caleb; Pfluger, Andrew; Butkus, Michael
    The ability to effectively communicate technical information is an important skill for engineers, especially young engineers entering the workforce upon completion of their education. Undergraduate environmental engineering programs normally address technical communications, but some do not provide intentionally placed discipline-specific technical communication experiences designed to progressively increase communication skills through the curriculum. Conducting a crosswalk of graded events with a technical communication component across a curriculum can help an institution understand the placement of technical communication graded events and identify opportunities for improvement. This study presents a survey-based approach for gathering information about all technical communication graded events within an environmental engineering curriculum and a method for analysis using a longitudinal crosswalk of all applicable courses from freshman to senior year. Results from this study indicate that the number of graded technical communication events in our program increases longitudinally from freshman to senior year. Further, the number of individually completed events and written events were highest in the sophomore year, with team events and oral communication events increasing in the junior and senior years. Additionally, the weighting of graded events shifted longitudinally through major courses. Graded events worth 5% of the course grade were most prevalent in the sophomore year, and events worth ≥ 5% occurred most frequently in the senior year. Implications for our university’s environmental engineering program are discussed, to include opportunities for scaffolding events across courses. The methods presented in this study can be used by other environmental engineering programs to identify gaps in technical communication education and methods for improvement within their curriculum.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Five-minute Adsorption Demonstration
    (ASEE, 2020) Butkus, Michael; Shetty, Anand; Wallen, Benjamin; Sheehan, Nathaniel; Pfluger, Andrew
    Adsorption is one of the most common physicochemical treatment processes in environmental engineering. Faculty typically teach this process by explaining figures and equations in texts, which can limit learning. The five minute classroom demonstration presented here replicates the adsorption experiment and data analysis, which may engage students and enhance learning without imposing substantial demands on student time. Students observe removal of Crystal violet dye or food coloring by activated carbon in real time in a column demonstration. Simultaneously, data from an adsorption experiment is collected in an accelerated video format and an animated PowerPoint presentation illustrates how experimental data is used to quantify Isotherm Model parameters. Results from the Crystal violet adsorption experiment and isotherm model parameters are presented along with an in-class example problem.