Energy and the environment are among the most important issues facing this generation of college students. What better way to learn about these issues than over Korean banchan or Indian curry?
The elective International Experience in Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering (EECE 401) allows WUSTL undergraduates the opportunity to study energy science at a top university in another country.
International initiatives are coordinated by WUSTL’S McDonnell International Scholars Academy, an innovative program that brings students from overseas universities to St. Louis for doctoral or professional degree programs. The goal is both to develop future global leaders and to forge enduring relationships among institutions.
“Having this network in place, we felt we could address global challenge areas, and there’s of course no greater global challenge area than energy and the environment,” says Pratim Biswas, Ph.D., the Stifel and Quinette Jens Professor of Environmental Engineering Science and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering.
“So we created a subgroup called MAGEEP, for McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environment Partnership,” said Biswas, who also is MAGEEP’s director. “We met for the first time in 2007 in St. Louis, and many collaborative projects arose out of this meeting. But we felt we should also do something for the undergraduates because they also are eager to have an international experience.”
The group designed an elective in which two faculty members lead a team of students on a trip to one of the McDonnell partner universities. Each year’s class has a theme, based on the interests of the coordinating faculty members.
In the inaugural year, students traveled to Beijing to study airquality science just as the Chinese government was trying to bring down pollution levels for the 2008 Olympic Games. This past summer, students traveled to Seoul to learn about nanotechnology and its role in energy and the environment, visiting Yonsei University, Korea University and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
“So far, everyone seems to feel it’s just a fabulous experience,” Biswas said.
The class isn’t the standard semester abroad. The students take preprogram seminars in the spring to bring them up to speed on the technology theme and to introduce them to the language and culture of the host country. During the summer trip, they spend mornings attending lectures and afternoons touring labs.
Some stay on to do internships at the partner university. All of the students prepare a seminar presentation in November and a research paper in December.
During her internship, Yueyang Frances Fei, a junior biomedical engineering major, worked on tiny disks that would be used in microarrays, also known as gene chips or DNA chips.
Another student, Daniel Eicholtz, a sophomore chemical engineering major, experimented with ways to improve a catalyst that boosts fuel cell performance.
But it’s not all work. The students who visited Korea last summer enjoyed meals of banchan and kimchi, rode the bullet train, visited gaming centers called PC bangs where kids gather to play multiplayer computer games and eat ramen noodles, and ogled a giant virtual fish pond complete with talking fish in the Yonsei University library.
Next year, the theme will be aerosols and the class will travel to Mumbai, India, with faculty members Da-Ren Chen, Ph.D., associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering, and Ruth Chen, Ph.D., professor of practice in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
While WUSTL has an internationally known aerosol science and technology group, providing an opportunity to undergraduates to see some of this in practice in other parts of the world is a unique educational experience.
Da-Ren Chen’s research interest is devising instruments for measuring aerosols, including miniature aerosol sensor/GPS hybrids, and Ruth Chen’s is the toxicity of small particles.
The students will attend lectures on a variety of energy-related topics with their counterparts at the India Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Field trips will include visits to petrochemical plants and rural villages.
Part of the program will be in conjunction with faculty from another McDonnell Academy partner university, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). Gautam Yadama, Ph.D., associate professor of social work in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and an ambassador to TISS, and Biswas have a project under way in which novel aerosol instruments are being used to measure particle size distributions from biomass cook stoves.
The idea is to introduce students to the two extremes of Indian energy use, said Biswas. Coal-fired plants are going up all over India as it moves on with its industrial develoment.
Indian villagers use the oldest form of biofuel to cook food: wood from trees.
Interested applicants can download an application at eece.wustl.edu/undergraduateprograms/Pages/MumbaiIndia.aspx. The deadline has been extended.
For more information, contact Ruth Chen at ruth.chen@wustl.edu or 935-6103.