Teaching Standards in Environmental Site Assessments

Since 2010, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences of City College of New York (CCNY) has successfully implemented a two-semester sequence course entitled Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments. From the very beginning of this effort, a total of ten standards per semester were used as mandatory reference material. Based on this experience, several practical ideas emerge as successful means of integrating standards into an academic curriculum

Standards in Research and Academia: The Role of Standards in Teaching Professional Skills at the City University of New York

Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) are pairing up with academia to continue to break the barriers to standards education at the undergraduate level. In addition, SDOs are working with the research facilities of academic institutions in a public-private partnership to maintain standards technological relevancy and to find new opportunities to provide standardization to industry and government. This session provides several examples of relationships between SDOs, government, academic institutions, and SES, and describes the advances made from these relationships

On the Pursuit of Relevance in Standards-based Curriculum Development: The CCNY Approach

The Society for Standards Professionals (SES) has a significant history of documenting the use of standards in research and academia. For instance, during the 62nd Annual SES Conference in 2013 in Savannah, Georgia, the author participated in such a session highlighting examples of relationships between academic institutions, government, and standards developing organizations. In this article, we attempt to capture the current advances made from similar relationships specific to our home institution, the City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY.) These advances have become possible through a grant issued under the Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

The Impact of New York State\u27s 2016 Mold Licensing Requirement on Indoor Air Quality Assessments

As of January 2016, New York joined a select number of states in regulating mold. The New York State Department of Labor has approved mold-related training courses in three levels, ranging from two to four days. These include the mold abatement worker, mold remediation contractor, and mold assessor courses. In this presentation we share the experience obtained to date from delivering the above referenced courses and challenges as an approved training provider. We also evaluate the relative effectiveness of the mode of delivery as it relates to different audiences

An analysis of the economic and environmental impact of the U.S. EPA\u27s Brownfields program in New York and New Jersey from 2009 to 2014 using GIS

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) as part of its mission to protect human health and the environment has developed a Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative designed to empower States, communities and other stakeholders in economic development to work collaboratively to in a timely manner to prevent, assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse brownfields. In order to effectively carry out the mission of the Brownfields Program, all ten regions share in the same goal of redeveloping brownfields. In this project we explore correlations between median household income and Brownfields funding (i.e., Phase I/Phase II assessments and clean-up grants). Our hypothesis is that the median household income may increase as an effect of EPA funding allocated to respective communities within EPA’s region 2. This includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. For this project we focus on grants allocated within New York and New Jersey for the period 2009-2014. The available datasets were analyzed statistically and graphed using ArcGIS. We produced a series of maps summarizing and comparing census data to actual Brownfield sites that received funding during the period in consideration. This presentation captures our progress to date. Our conclusions are constrained by additional analysis that is required, which we expect to perform in the following period

Examination of Geophysical Signatures of Ethanol-Water Mixtures in a Homogeneous Sand Column Using Ground Penetrating Radar and Time-Domain Reflectometry

In recent years there has been an increase in the frequency of incidents involving ethanol-blended gasoline affecting the groundwater. Near-surface geophysical methods hold promise for site characterization at ethanol contaminated sites. We attempted to record the broadband dielectric properties of ethanol at various concentrations as it was circulating through a closed tank containing either sand or a sand-clay mixture. Two high frequency GPR antennas were positioned symmetrically on either side of the sample holder to obtain transmission measurements. In the first part of the experiment we used a sample consisting of sand. In the second part of the experiment we used a sample containing sand mixed with 2% clay. Ethanol concentration was increased inside the sample holder by incrementally introducing additional pure ethanol. The sample holder was part of a closed circulation system that allowed the adjustment of ethanol concentration in the 0%-28% range. Prior to starting the experiments we established a dielectric permittivity relationship for liquid ethanol water mixtures in the range of ethanol concentrations between 0% and 100% using TDR. Using this relationship we inferred concentrations of the ethanol-water mixtures circulating through the sample holder by temporarily suspending the flow and collecting TDR measurements of the mixtures entering and exiting the sample. We evaluated the potential for GPR to predict ethanol concentrations based on a CRIM model in sand or sand-clay media. Ethanol concentration in the sand and sand-clay mixtures are well-predicted by the CRIM model when ethanol is added. However, the CRIM model does not succeed in predicting ethanol concentrations in either mixture undergoing ethanol withdrawal. During ethanol withdrawal, dielectric permittivity values exhibit hysteretic effects. Synthetic modeling exercises indicate that this behavior is not the result of a change in the fitting parameter within the CRIM model, and that the hysteresis observed is a physical process warranting further research

Integration of Live Radio Programming & Real-time Blogging in the Macaulay Honors College Seminar III on Science and Technology in New York City

In this presentation we summarize the lessons learnt through this experience of including live radio programming activities in the context of Macaulay Honors College Seminar III on Science and Technology in New York City. Our presentation falls under the innovation theme and specifically the blended learning opportunities track. The overall goal of the Macaulay Honors College Seminar III is to offer students fundamental scientific and technological knowledge. An essential aspect of our approach was to afford Honors students a real opportunity to interface directly with the actual people involved in science and technology. We arranged for live radio interviews, as well as for pre-recorded ones with -among others- Nobel Laureates, innovators, entrepreneurs, technology-transfer officers from major Universities, and science and technology commentators from the mass media. During the first year of this project, Honors students were assigned pre-existing audio archives of interviews. Students produced a report of 1000-1500 words describing the scientific concepts behind the work of each interviewee. In the second year the class experience was upgraded to live radio programming. Honors students were situated in a “green room” with laptops and blogged questions in real time to the interviewees. A student representative was the instructor’s co-host of the radio program. This programming was realized in the studios of WHCR 90.3 FM, a community radio station broadcasting from the campus of the City College of New York. During the third year of the project the same facilities were used for video-taping interviews among students. We focused on Nobel Laureates who claim City College of New York as their alma mater. We conclude that our approach is sustainable since the available technology allows most students to capture as an audio file or a video file the topic in consideration. Preparing a broadcast entails unique challenges not common in traditional class settings. We also concluded that our approach is measurable since students responsible for a variety of topics were able to follow-up with several interviewees. In some instances students were awarded an internship through the interviewees. This was measurable in that most of this material was archived on respective course websites complete with public commenting and indications for “number of hits” or “number of views.” We consider our approach scalable due to the ever expanding on-line platforms of most CUNY campuses

Brownfield Action: Dissemination of a SENCER Model Curriculum and the Creation of a Collaborative STEM Education Network

Brownfield Action (BA) is a web-based environmental site assessment (ESA) simulation in which students form geotechnical consulting companies and work together to solve problems in environmental forensics. Developed at Barnard College with the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, BA has been disseminated to ten colleges, universities, and high schools, resulting in a collaborative network of educators. The experiences of current users are presented describing how they have incorporated the BA curriculum into their courses, as well as how BA affected teaching and learning. The experiences demonstrate that BA can be used in whole or in part, is applicable to a wide range of student capabilities and has been successfully adapted to a variety of learning goals, from introducing non-science-literate students to basic concepts of environmental science and civic issues of environmental contamination to providing advanced training in ESA and modeling groundwater contamination to future environmental professionals