THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND OF SALT LAKE CITY: INTRODUCING ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES TO ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES STUDENTS

Minor programs in environmental studies offer a unique educational challenge. A thorough comprehension of the interrelationship between human society and the natural world is unquestionably based on a scientific understanding of the environment, yet these programs are very typically targeted towards students who are not science concentrators. The current push to incorporate independent research projects into undergraduate curricula is therefore particularly challenging as many students in these programs have very little background in scientific method or experimental design. In our Environmental Earth Sciences class at Westminster College, students undertake a study of the urban heat island effect in the Salt Lake Valley. All students in the class participate in the study, which includes a group decision on how and where to collect data, independent data collection, compilation and plotting of that data, and interpretation of the patterns found. While the scientific results of the project were unsurprising, the educational benefits that the students received from doing the project were impressive. This project is both interesting and useful for students, because it requires them to think about subtleties of both data collection and analysis that are infrequently considered by non-science majors. Analysis of student performance on exams reveals that this project improves student comprehension of the urban heat island effect; however, this does not appear to be the only educational benefit to this project. Having seen the vagaries and difficulties inherent in their own data collection, students who have participated in this project are more skeptical of and think more critically about other scientific findings that they encounter.