SERVICE LEARNING: MOVING SCIENTIFIC WORK INTO THE “REAL WORLD”

Geoscientists are generally “in the news” in the event of a natural disaster. Many people rarely consider the importance of the environmental and earth sciences in daily life. Scientists must interact with non-scientists in ordinary circumstances to encourage an understanding of what scientists can and cannot do. Service-learning is a pedagogy that can be used to bring the significance of scientific understanding to both students and community members. Current students will eventually become community members, so the more students involved in service-learning investigations, the better.

Unity College is a very small environmentally-focused undergraduate institution in rural Maine with a student population of less than 600. Unity College has always been a big proponent of experiential education. As wide variety of towns, schools, land trusts, pond associations and other groups approach Unity College with project ideas, service-learning was an obvious choice as a pedagogical technique. One example of such work follows.

Over the past four years Environmental Analysis students have been working on arsenic in drinking water systems. Students have performed literature reviews, evaluated field techniques for analysis of arsenic in water and looked for diurnal variation in arsenic concentrations in a domestic water well. A community science experiment allowed community members to evaluate arsenic remediation technologies. The “clients” for this work include the citizens of Unity, ME and Boron, CA. This work has been sponsored and/or funded by Unity College, the Town of Unity, the Unity Barn Raisers, Chemists Without Borders and the American Chemical Society – Mojave Desert Section. Some of this work is applicable to global water quality problems.