Research Integrated Curriculum In Geoenvironmental Engineering

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Research-Integrated Curriculum in Geoenvironmental Engineering Alok Bhandari, Lakshmi N. Reddi, Larry E. Erickson, Stacy L. Hutchinson, and David R. Steward Departments of Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-5000 Introduction Rapid growth in global population and industrial development in the past few decades have led to several environmental problems related to soil and groundwater. As public agencies, private firms, and academia embarked on projects aimed at seeking solutions to waste management and subsurface contamination problems, it became clear that the scientific and engineering issues involved were diverse and required adoption of interdisciplinary approaches. The need for interdisciplinarity in assessing and solving geoenvironmental problems requires that students, researchers, engineering personnel and research managers synthesize and apply principles from a diverse set of disciplines. The immense growth in research on waste containment and site remediation coupled with the need for interdisciplinarity, brings about the necessity for the development of multidisciplinary and integrated research and curriculum development programs in geoenvironmental engineering. This paper presents a curriculum framework for geoenvironmental engineering developed with support from the National Science Foundation’s Combined Research-Curriculum Development (CRCD) program. The objectives of this curriculum are: 1. To synthesize relevant principles and themes from a number of allied disciplines in sciences and engineering such as environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering/geology, water resources engineering/hydrology/hydraulics, chemical engineering, biological and agricultural engineering/biological sciences, and agronomy/soil sciences; 2. To incorporate rapidly evolving research on subsurface fate and transfer processes, site remediation and waste containment methods into the curriculum; 3. To provide exposure to a multi-agency perspective such that “real world” site remediation and waste containment problems could be solved within the constraints of state and federal regulatory agencies; and 4. To incorporate interactive and experiential learning-oriented education methods and interdisciplinary team experiences into design education. Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education