In spring 2021, associate professor of engineering Dr. Brenda Read-Daily worked with Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry students at Palmyra Area High School in order to teach them about environmental engineering. Her project focused on teaching the students about water hardness and managing the nitrogen cycle. It was recently featured in an Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP) newsletter.
Read-Daily has been working on the project for nearly two years, and she was awarded a grant by the AEESP Foundation Grant Program to fund the project in Sept. 2019. She was originally planning to attend the AP Chemistry class in-person with two engineering students in spring in2020, but like most events, these plans changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By this time, both the College and Palmyra Area High School were conducting classes remotely. Read-Daily adapted to the situation by removing the hands-on activity component, providing electronic handouts and materials to the teacher and recording a presentation that could be shared with the students.
The funding agency allowed Read-Daily to extend the project for another year so she could implement the hands-on activities. Even though she was unable to visit the high school this year, the students were back in-person for classes, and the teacher could experience the project’s hands-on activities.
During class, students tested water samples for hardness, which is the concentration of calcium and magnesium ions in water, and nitrate concentration. They also completed worksheets about how chemistry skills relate to environmental engineering applications. Read-Daily gave a presentation through Zoom to the class about chemistry techniques used to solve environmental engineering problems. More specifically, she discussed water hardness removal via precipitation using lime and soda ash and ion exchange as well as how chemical thermodynamics and kinetics are involved in designing biological wastewater treatment systems.
She shared that the student responsiveness was positive overall and that the students were curious about the topics she discussed. They had several questions since many of them were not familiar with the field of environmental engineering prior to the activities. In fact, the class and teacher were so happy with Read-Daily’s project that she was invited back to the school next year. She wants to further expand her activities for the students by incorporating real-world data that the students can analyze using the skills they learned in the AP Chemistry class. The teacher also requested that Read-Daily implement her activities earlier in the school year while students were covering the topics rather than in mid or late May, post AP exam.
Read-Daily also encouraged other professors in other disciplines to reach out to local high schools about doing similar projects.
“I think there is a lot of opportunity here to visit other AP classes like AP Environmental Science, AP Physics and AP Calculus. Students take AP exams early in May but still have about a month of school before the school year ends,” she said. “Teachers are receptive at this point in the semester to have outside speakers come and share on relevant topics and applications that tie to the course.”
Overall, the project was a great success despite COVID-19 challenges, and Read-Daily looks forward to further working with Palmyra Area High School and its students.
