Abstract
Environmental Sciences Technology T272 is a course with a laboratory addressing problems in soil and water quality and organic wastes utilization to serve students from associate degree programs in laboratory science and environmental resources management at a 2-year technical college. Goals are to build basic lab skills and understand the role and importance of sample collection to address several environmental issues in agronomy. Prerequisites are basic mathematics and one quarter of college chemistry. Students collect and perform tests on water samples from small watersheds, sample soil at prescribed distances to confirm source of contaminant (road salt), and collect and evaluate three species of livestock manure. Field trips are conducted to water and wastewater facilities of a small city and to the USDA-ARS North Appalachian Experimental Watershed in Coshocton, OH. Written reports on these activities are prepared in the style of scientific journal articles or posters. This course presents opportunities to teach simple statistics such as sample mean, standard deviation, and simple fitting of data points to a linear regression model. Students struggle with the expectation that reports are presented in journal article or poster style, but overall response to the course has been positive.
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