Understanding the Hoosick Falls Water Crisis

纽约的胡西克福尔斯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“胡西克福尔斯水危机”，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。 该课程将由社会科学家，化学家和地球科学家共同教授，并将借鉴人类学，化学和地质学中的方法和概念，使本科生能够在危机时期进行紧急环境研究。 该项目还将为纽约州Hoosick福尔斯社区制作一个数据集。 预计将产生三种广泛的影响。 首先，学生和研究人员将收集有关住宅威尔斯中PFOA浓度的独立数据，从而形成一个数据集，有助于描述PFOA的起源、程度和轨迹。 其次，学生将协助教师准备向社区介绍研究结果，这不仅有助于向公众提供信息，而且还有助于加强学生的沟通技能，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的教学和学习材料，以纳入中学后STEM课程。了解胡西克福尔斯水危机的目的是影响参与学生学习周围的胡西克福尔斯水危机，以提供学生在监测地下水污染的强大的培训和经验，并产生初步的独立数据，这将有助于描述起源，范围和轨迹的PFOA地下水羽周围胡西克福尔斯，纽约州。 指导性的教育研究问题是：如何对当地公共危机进行环境研究，以提高本科生的STEM课程？具体来说，研究人员正在研究如何培训学生在环境化学和水文地质学，并装备他们应用这些学科为基础的技能，以帮助产生关键数据的地方危机将影响学生入学和保留在干领域。 研究人员假设，在有意义的环境研究中的实践经验将证明STEM领域在文科教育中的价值，并提高STEM和非STEM专业的学生成绩。评估将使用（1）前和后评估，将衡量学生对环境化学和水文学的态度和能力，（2）招生和课程成绩数据，以及（3）学生的反思。

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.