DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSITY COURSE TO TEACH PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SITE ASSESSMENTS

Students today need to gain practical experience that will help them develop skills that are desirable to potential employers. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of environmental geology, where students complete their education often to find positions with environmental consulting firms or government agencies that value practical experience more than the primarily theoretical studies that are common to university curricula. The ISGS recognized this need, and in collaboration with a faculty member, we re-designed an existing course at a local university to include information on environmental site assessments (ESAs). We identified certain key elements that are essential to a course of this nature. The first element involves writing a test plan for a project area; this assignment requires students to become familiar with the use of Sanborn maps, aerial photographs, and city directories as they research the history of an area in their own community. Students visit the project area to search for clues to former land uses. They also learn how to use a variety of geologic maps to define the subsurface materials in their project area. This information allows them to make some assumptions about the expected behavior of potential subsurface contaminants at the project site, and therefore leads to more informed sampling decisions and results interpretation. Another key factor in this course program is choosing a class ESA project that is small enough in scale to complete in about a month. While working on this project, students become familiar with hazard recognition, soil gas analysis, sampling of soil and groundwater for contaminants of concern, and using risk-based clean-up objectives. The site assessment culminates in the preparation of a technical ESA report. Opportunities for designing and implementing similar courses may exist in collaboration with other educational institutions. Courses that teach students how to locate the information they need and how to apply it in the field as they perform ESAs serve to join theory with practicality; science with hands-on decision-making.