Understanding the Hoosick Falls Water Crisis

纽约Hoosick Falls村最近在其公共供水系统中发现了不安全浓度的全氟辛酸（PFOA）。本宁顿学院的教职员工将开设一门新课程“Hoosick Falls Water Crisis”，为本科生提供与这场实时灾难相关的科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的关键分析技能和实地研究经验。该课程将由一名社会科学家、一名化学家和一名地球科学家共同授课，并将借鉴人类学、化学和地质学中的方法和概念，使本科生具备在危机时期进行紧急环境研究的能力。该项目还将为纽约州Hoosick Falls社区提供数据集。预计将产生三个范围广泛、范围更广的影响。首先，学生和研究人员将收集居民井中PFOA浓度的独立数据，从而形成一个数据集，该数据集将有助于描述PFOA的来源、范围和轨迹。其次，学生将协助教师准备向社区介绍研究结果，这不仅有助于告知公众，而且有助于加强学生的沟通技巧，帮助他们更好地将科学知识与社会成果联系起来。最后，教师研究人员计划开发和分发关于PFOA的教学材料，以纳入高等教育STEM课程。了解胡西克瀑布水危机旨在影响参与学生围绕胡西克瀑布水危机的学习，以便为学生提供监测地下水污染的强大培训和经验，并生成初步的独立数据，这些数据将有助于表征纽约州胡西克瀑布周围PFOA地下水羽流的起源、范围和轨迹。指导教育研究的问题是：对当地公共危机的环境研究如何加强本科学生的STEM课程？具体来说，研究人员正在研究如何在环境化学和水文地质学方面培训学生，并使他们具备应用这些基于学科的技能来帮助生成有关当地危机的关键数据的能力，这将影响STEM领域的学生入学率和保留率。研究人员假设，有意义的环境研究的实践经验将证明STEM领域在文科教育中的价值，并提高STEM和非STEM专业学生在STEM领域的成绩。评估将使用(1)评估学生对环境化学和水文学的态度和能力的前后评估，(2)注册和课程表现数据，以及(3)学生反思。

The Village of Hoosick Falls in New York recently discovered unsafe concentrations of Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) in its public water system. Faculty members at Bennington College will offer a new course, "Hoosick Falls Water Crisis," to provide undergraduate students with key analytic skills and field research experience in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields related to this real-time disaster. The course will be co-taught by a social scientist, a chemist, and a geoscientist and will draw on methodologies and concepts within anthropology, chemistry, and geology to equip undergraduates to conduct urgent environmental research in times of crisis. This project will also produce a dataset for the community of Hoosick Falls, NY. Three wide-ranging broader impacts are anticipated. First, the students and researchers will collect independent data on PFOA concentrations in residential wells, resulting in a dataset that will help characterize the origin, extent, and trajectory of PFOA. Second, students will assist faculty members in preparing presentations of the findings to the community, which will not only serve to inform the public, but will also help strengthen students' communication skills and help them better connect their scientific knowledge to societal outcomes. Finally, the faculty researchers plan to develop and distribute teaching and learning materials on PFOA for inclusion in postsecondary STEM curricula. Understanding the Hoosick Falls Water Crisis seeks to effect engaged student learning around the Hoosick Falls water crisis in order to provide students with robust training and experience in monitoring groundwater contamination and generate preliminary independent data that will help characterize the origin, extent, and trajectory of the PFOA groundwater plume around Hoosick Falls, NY. The guiding educational research question is: How can environmental research on a local public crisis enhance the STEM curriculum for undergraduate students? Specifically, the researchers are studying how training students in environmental chemistry and hydrogeology and equipping them to apply those discipline-based skills to help produce key data on a local crisis will influence student enrollment and retention in STEM fields. The researchers hypothesize that hands-on experience in meaningful environmental research will demonstrate the value of STEM fields in a liberal arts education and enhance student outcomes within STEM for both STEM and non-STEM majors. Evaluation will occur using (1) pre- and post-assessments that will measure student attitudes towards and aptitude in environmental chemistry and hydrology, (2) enrollment and course performance data, and (3) student reflections.