EcoScience + Art initiative: Designing a New Paradigm for College Education, Scholarship, and Service

Abstract

The paper presents a new initiative, EcoScience + Art, which blooms at George Mason University. The creator explains the background, history, and recent activities of the initiative, and also introduces an on-going special project called “The Rain Project”, a student participatory project to design, construct, and monitor a green infrastructure (i.e., floating wetland) for sustainable stormwater management on campus. The special project is geared to design and present a new paradigm to integrate college education, scholarship, and service. The relevance of the initiative and the special project to STEAM education is discussed. Author/Artist Bio Ahn is currently an Associate Professor in Environmental Science and Policy, and an affiliated faculty member with Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering and Biology. Ahn is a wetland ecosystem ecologist and an ecological engineer. He teaches Wetland Ecology and Management, Ecosystem Modeling and Analysis, Ecological Sustainability, Ecological Engineering and Ecosystem Restoration. Ecological Sustainability is a relatively new course that is a green course sponsored by sustainability office and also a research and scholarship (R&S) intensive course for undergraduates designated by Students as Scholars program at the univeristy. Ahn is dedicated to developing and innovating methods of teaching that will incorporate strong research experiences into undergraduate science education. To date, Ahn has published over 100 peerreviewed abstracts and journal articles, authored several book chapters. He is also a book review editor for Ecological Engineering-the Journal of Ecosystem Restoration. In 2013, Ahn created the EcoScience + Art, a new initiative to develop innovative ways of integrating teaching, research, and community service that can be adopted for designing college STEAM education.