Educational Activities

October 2005-October 2006

This Partnership focuses on providing engineers and scientists with an international perspective on water–related needs and research. At the heart of this program are student research visits to our international collaborators. This summer, 4 graduate students performed water-filtration research for six weeks at two different sites, Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine. These three-week visits at each site, which are shorter than those envisioned in the future, are enabling students to achieve promising results and are generating enthusiasm for the collaborative projects. Moreover, the shorter visits allowed us to assess conditions and possibilities at each collaborative site.Two undergraduate students, Adam Rogensues and Randy Benedict, also performed research for 4 weeks at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy . Their travel was facilitated by a grant from the North American Membrane Society (NAMS), which was awarded to Tarabara and Bruening for this purpose. Adam Rogensues also received a MSU College of Engineering undergraduate summer research internship for summer research and he participated in the study abroad programs in Volgograd and Kyiv. To ensure success in these endeavors and initiate collaborations, Professors Bruening, Tarabara, and Voice also traveled to each site to present seminars, discuss projects with collaborators and help students in beginning new projects. After the summer experience, confidential electronic survey was performed to assess the productivity of this part of the program and to suggest methods for improvement.

In addition to research, which is the primary focus of international visits, students are learning more about science in the countries they visit. Programs aimed at this purpose included trips to the Museum of Chernobyl (Kyiv), the Water Information Center (Kyiv) and the museum Cité de Science (Paris), and lectures on funding opportunities in the partner countries. Of particular interest to this project, the Cité de Science museum contains an exhibit on water purification (L'Eau Pour Tous).

Students and faculty have also attended conferences and given presentations on their work. NAMS provided a travel grant for Srividhya Kidambi to attend their national meeting in Chicago , at which she was awarded a $500 prize in the student poster competition. Her poster described research in which modification of membranes with Ag nanoparticles yielded antibacterial surfaces that may decrease biofouling. In recognition of his early research successes, Julian Taurozzi was awarded McCowen Fellowship by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Because the grant began in October 2005, recruitment of graduate students to the program was limited to those already at Michigan State University . Recruitment of undergraduate students was performed by distributing an electronic brochure to students in chemistry and engineering. Future opportunities for participation in the project, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, will focus on broadly-advertised recruitment emphasizing attracting applicants from underrepresented groups. In this regard, we have established a linkage with the High School Honors Science/Mathematics/Engineering Program which brings in highly talented high school students, the majority of whom are minorities, from across the country to MSU for a summer research experience. In the Summer 2006, Aubrey Huynh , a high school research intern, worked in Dr. Tarabara's group on the project "The effect of humic substances and their ozonation by-products on the performance of polymeric nanofiltration membranes".

Curriculum development efforts included a special topics course in surface characterization and analysis, taught by Bruening, a new graduate level course “Membrane Separations in Chemical and Environmental Engineering” by Tarabara, and a new interdisciplinary course in the Environmental Science and Policy Program entitled “Physical, Chemical and Biological Processes of the Environment,” which was co-taught by Voice. Building on the successful MSU Study Abroad program in Volgograd (Russia), we are initiating a similar, but environmentally-focused program in Kyiv. This summer, an independent study course on membrane separations was offered, as well as courses in Ukrainian culture and history, taught by faculty from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

For more information, please contact: Thomas Voice or Volodymyr Tarabara,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA 48824
Phone: +1 517 353 9718. Fax: +1 517 355 0250. Email: permeant@egr.msu.edu