Facts

Key Allegheny Benefits

• Enhanced understanding-from scientific, social, and humanities perspectives-of the environment and current environmental issues.
• Experience in solving actual environmental problems.
• Ability to use modern research methods to explain observations about the natural world and about societies.
• A network of alumni in government, industry, and the academic world linking students to jobs and graduate programs.

Allegheny Distinctions

• Numerous opportunities for experiential learning in nearby natural environments: wetlands, lakes, streams, and forests, including a College-owned Research Reserve.
• Extensive internship opportunities with local, state and federal agencies, non-profit environmental organizations and local industry.
• Vigorous off-campus study program.
• Emphasis on independent research.
• Required Senior Project that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major independent research project.
• Two majors, Environmental Science and Environmental Studies, with over a dozen study area concentrations.
• One of the oldest environmental science departments in the country (established in 1972).
• Faculty involve students in local, state and national environmental issues and research.

Endorsements

• A NASA New Investigator Award to study the influences of El Niño climatic events in Philippine farming systems and forest use.
• Center for Economic and Environmental Development (CEED) and Creek Connections, recently received Governor's Awards for Environmental Excellence.
• Recent awards from the National Science Foundation in support of student/faculty research on forest and aquatic ecosystems.
• Grants totaling $1.3 million from the Heinz Endowment, Mellon Foundation, Eden Hall Foundation, Luce Foundation, and others support the College's commitment to sustainable community development and improved environmental quality in northwestern Pennsylvania.
• Three faculty members recently received prestigious Fulbright Scholar Awards.

Facilities Strengths

• Environmental Science Students have access to department equipment as required for courses or research projects.
• Fully-equipped Geographic Information Systems (GIS) laboratory to analyze geographic and environmental information.
• Bousson Environmental Research Reserve is used for environmental and ecological research by faculty and students. Ten miles from the main campus, Bousson has 283 acres of woodlands, as well as ponds, streams and wetlands.
• Computers: both personal computers and workstations, linked to campus network.
• Laboratory for soil, plant, water and atmospheric analysis.

Collaborative Faculty/Student Research Projects

Faculty and students routinely work collaboratively on environmental research and problem-solving projects. Recent projects include:

• Ecotourism in Northwest Pennsylvania
• Art as a means to promote sustainability
• Initiatives in local energy conservation
• Climate change, El Niño climatic events, and resource use in the Philippines
• Aquatic ecology of the Rocky Mountains
• Fate of the pesticide atrazine in soils and water
• Assessment of environmental curricula at colleges and universities
• The role of forest soil in storing atmospheric carbon
• An industrial ecology approach to power generation and fish production
• Sustainable forest initiatives by local woodland owners
• Wetland reconstruction
• Ecological assessment of local conservation lands
• Hands-on methods in high school science education
• Involvement of Meadville citizens in local environmental planning

Student Research

Students engage in a wide range of research, environmental problem-solving projects and off-campus activities. Over one hundred students per year are involved on such activities.

Junior Seminar Research Projects

Some recent titles:

• "Aquaponics"
  "Ecotourism in Northwest Pennsylvania"
  "Meadville Community Energy Project"
  "Sustainable Forestry in Northwest Pennsylvania"
  "Community Visioning and Social Justice"
  "Art and the Environment"

Senior Projects

The Senior Project is a major piece of independent research extending through both semesters of the senior year. It demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information, and to write and speak persuasively. Faculty research interests are often reflected in Senior Projects, and a faculty project advisor can become a post-project collaborator, co-authoring papers and professional presentations with current students and alumni.

Recent Senior Projects, Environmental Science

• Logging Moratorium in the Allegheny National Forest: An Economic Impact Study of Sheffield, Pennsylvania
• Study of the Resource Manager and Cooperative Group Models of Certification and Their Feasibility for Small, Non-Industrial Private Forestland Owners in Northwestern Pennsylvania
• Assessing the Impacts of Urban Sprawl Development and Proposing Alternative Strategies for the Future: The Case of Meadville, Pennsylvania
• Wooded and Non-Wooded Temporary Wetlands in Northwestern Pennsylvania: Drought Survival and Colonization Strategies of Invertebrates
• Human Health, the Environment and Silence: Hazards Created by the Use of Poly-Vinyl Chloride IV Bags
• Strategic Environmental Management at Bi-Lok Ihara Corporation: Turning Environmental Quality and Efficiency into Business Opportunities
• Ecolabeling's Effects on Consumers, Businesses and the Environment
• The Endangered Species Act: An Effective Mechanism for Maintaining Biodiversity?
• A Wetlands Index of Biological Integrity
• The Effects of Road Salt Runoff (NaCl) on Caddisfly (Hydropsyche betteni) Drift in Mill Run, Meadville, Pennsylvania
• Sustainable Forestry in Northwestern Pennsylvania: Obstacles and Opportunities
• Environmental Education: Creation, Local Implementation and Evaluation of the Industrial Park Ecology Curriculum
• Ecological Feasibility of Wolf Reintroduction Into the Allegheny National Forest
• Estimation of the Monetary Value of a Wetland Using Economic Principles
• Some Like it Hot: Ecological Art and a Solar Energy Sculpture

Selected Student Achievements

Emphasis on student research enables our students to reach achievements usually not attainable at the undergraduate level. Recent examples of student scholarship include:

Publications

• "Spatial variation in the distribution of phosphorous species in the surface sediments of Canadohta Lake, Pennsylvania: implication for internal phosphorous loading estimates." (Senior Project co-authored by student and faculty, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences)
• "Beaver-pond wetlands in western Pennsylvania: An experimental analysis of colonization and dessication tolerance after drought" (published in Wetland Invertebrates of North America)
• "Carbon dioxide and methane fluxes by a forest soil under laboratory-controlled moisture and temperature condition" (research project co-authored by student and faculty published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry)

Presentations

• "Effects of riparian forest width on stream-side salamander communities" (presented at annual meeting of North American Benthelogical Society)
• "Alternative approaches for teaching international environmental politics" (presented at the national meetings of the International Studies Association)
• "Spatial variation in forest floor CO2 enrichment and in implications for photosynthesis in forests with different land use legacies" (presented at the Ecological Society of America)