George E. Meyer Due 9551564 University of Nebraska-Lincoln FY1995 $44.190 Lincoln, NE 68583 ILI - Instrumentation Project: Interdisciplinary Title: A Multidisciplinary Environmental Undergraduate Laboratory The Departments of Biological Systems Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Agricultural Meteorology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will equip a multidisciplinary Environmental Undergraduate Laboratory (EUL). The EUL will facilitate curricular change to address new teaching emphases for these departments. Our goal is to establish a learning environment that allows students to explore uses of state-of-the-art equipment to solve environmental problems. The five computer workstations and data acquisition systems, along with sensors to monitor environmental variables, including water quality, will encourage cooperative learning, problem-solving among small teams of students, and provide realistic experiences to prepare students for careers in research and industry. Laboratory sessions for four courses (two in BioSysE, one in AgMet, and one offered jointly in CivilE and BioSysE) will undergo significant revision. These revisions will emphasize use of laboratory exercises to build on mathematical descriptions of physical and chemical relationships introduced in lecture sessions and facilitate the understanding of thermodynamic and energy state relationships for environmental systems. The new exercises will permit "hands-on" experimentation using modern equipment including automated monitoring using data acquisition systems; sensor types, applications, design, testing and calibration; computer methods for data analysis; and error analyses for these systems. The EUL will also be used for exercises or demonstrations to enhance at least thirteen other undergraduate courses from three other disciplines. Laboratory manual s for the revised courses will be developed. Interactive televised sessions, using equipment from the EUL, will be presented via AG*SAT, a national agricultural television network.
