Browsing by Author "Sheehan, Nathaniel"

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    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.
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    Long-term Impact on Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge Assessed over Three Semesters of an Environmental Engineering Sequence
    (ASEE, 2019) Wallen, Benjamin; Sheehan, Nathaniel; Plante, Luke; Martinez, Erick; Starke, Jeffrey
    The pedagogy employed in a three-course environmental engineering sequence is investigated to determine the efficacy of enabling long-term improvement of knowledge and attitudes toward the environment. These three courses incorporate concepts of the five grand challenges released by the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences and increase the breadth of knowledge for T-professionals. Previous studies of lengths from a few weeks to semester long courses evaluated the potential causality among various demographics and environmental knowledge and attitudes. The research presented herein contrasts and compares changes in environmental knowledge based upon a 12-question survey and changes in environmental attitude based upon a seven-question survey administered at the beginning and end of the environmental engineering sequence courses taught to over 200 students from a variety of disciplines. Survey results demonstrate that a positive increase (9.27%) in knowledge occurred from the start to the end of the first course and the elimination of statistical differences among numerous demographics such as sex and race. After 18 months of environmental education, an 8.6% increase in knowledge was retained compared to the initial knowledge where the female and non-white demographics increased the most but retained the least. Results regarding environmental attitudes suggest that a focus on learning about environmental issues decreased positive attitudes toward the environment, whereas focusing on solutions to environmental issues increased positive attitudes toward the environment. Evaluating changes or sustainment of improved environmental attitudes over three semesters demonstrates the potential for an environmental engineering education to have a multi-year impact on the values and environmental ethos of students across many disciplines.
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    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.