August 2009: The Tampa Interdisciplinary Environmental Research (REU-TIER.net) graduated its first cohort of students, two of whom, Brittany Carl and Simone Wright, worked with Dr. Trotz. This is a NSF funded project for 3 years for which Dr. Trotz is the PI and Dr. Sylvia Thomas is the co-PI. Our first REU cohort consisted of 11 students from civil and environmental engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, biology, and physics. They came from the University of Florida, Clarkson University, SUNY New Paltz, University of South Florida, University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, University of Georgia, Albany State, Langston University, and South Carolina State University. The group was 64% women, 45% under represented minority and included one student from Trinidad and Tobago. Students were paired with 10 different faculty from the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and College of Public Health. Keep up with us on our webiste or facebook group.
July 2009: AEESP 2009 hosted its national conference in Iowa city at the University of Iowa addressing Grand Challenges. The first day I attended a workshop co-sponsored by USF's Prof. Mihelcic and Jane Zhang along with Linda Vanasupa and Julie Zimmerman entitled "AAESP Workshop on Expanding Your Educative Capacity to Integrate Sustainable Development Design Principles" for which we all received a copy of Environmental Engineering: Findamentals, Sustainability, Design. Keynote addresses were given by Profs. Jerry Schnoor, Joan Rose and Marc Edwards. Marc's talk was extremely motivational as he presented his work on lead in DC pipes that highlighted ethical issues in our profession and policy and legal frameworks for our field. There were many research and education talks given on Monday and Tuesday and we even had a barn party with a live band (singing reggae even!!).
April 2009: It's the EPA P3 competition in Washington, D.C. Our WARE-EAST Tampa project won an EPA People, Prosperity, Planet (P3) Phase II Award (2009). This P3 Award was judged by an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) panel with final decisions by the EPA. The award included funding of $75,000. Our team received one of the six awards selected from over 40 teams from around the country. Read more: USF NEWS; P3 site. Follow the WARE-EASTTAMPA project.
March 2009: The American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting held in Salt Lake City, Utah, honored Prof. J. O. Leckie in the geosciences division. The "Leckie moles" gathered there included Kim Hayes, Jim Davis, Mark Benjamin, Lambis Papellis, Rizlan Benchek-Latmani, Alesia Ferguson, Paloma Beamer, George Redden, Bruce Honeyman, Sandy Robertson, Mario Villalobos and Scott Altman. Tributes were made by Prof. Perry McCarthy and Gordon Brown, the latter sharing that the birth of the idea of EXAFS of sorption on mineral oxides occurred during Kim Haye's dissertation defense!
March 2009: The Sustainability Concepts: Mercury in Guyana course went to Guyana over Spring Break from March 13th to March 21st. The group included 10 students and 3 faculty and spent 3 nights at Iwokrama, 2 nights in Madia and 2 nights in Georgetown. In Iwokrama the group worked with staff on water quality monitoring training as well as surveying methods. In Madia the group visited 5 gold mines and learnt environmental sampling and population surveying methods. In Georgetown the group visited the University of Guyana, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Environmental Studies Unit and the CARICOM secretariat. December 2008: I was invited to partcipiate in NSF International Workshop on Delivering Sustainable Infrastructure that Supports the Urban Built Environment: Frontier Research Directions and International Collaborations in Sustainability Science and Engineering in Auckland, New Zealand. Prior to the workshop we attened a Blueprints for Sustainable Infrastructure conferernce. We then moved to Waihekeke Island for our four day workshop which you can read about here. There I met Prof. Marc Edwards who had just received a MacArthur fellowship, Prof. Paul Anastas who was nomiated to lead EPA's Office of Research and Development.
October 2008: Dr. Trotz and members of Engineers for a Sustainable World USF (Joniqua Howard, Ken Thomas and Erlande Omisca) spent a class period at King's Academy located in East Tampa. Pastor Johnson met us at the East Tampa Community Survival day in August and asked us to come and speak with his class, especially since his school just got a stormwater grant from SWFMD under the Splash Mini Grants program. The 3th and 4th graders in his class spent the hour learning about water, it's qualities and treatment. Using warm water filled with coffee beans and tea leaves we also used things from the kitchen to discuss water treatment processes (e.g. a colander strainer, a coffee filter).
September 2008: Dr. Trotz attended the 10th anniversary CARISCIENCE meeting in Trinidad and Tobago and the inaugral meetimg for a Caribbean Diaspora Association for Science Technology and Innovation and for a Caribbean Science Foundation. The latter two are currently headed by Prof. Cardinal Warde from MIT and committee members are still formalizing the organizations. August 2008: Dr. Trotz and graduate student Ken Thomas visited Green Castle Estates in the parish of St. Mary in Jamaica from August 18th-22nd, 2008. This builds on Ken's research on water quality indicators for ecotourism activities and established baseline conditions at Green Castle which is 1600 acres of privately owned land extending from the hills to the sea that is slated for sustainable development projects including ecotourism. Initial funding for this project was provided by the Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions at USF. More pictures of Greencastle can be seen by clicking here.
August 2008: The Engineers for a Sustainable World USF Chapter began working on its EPA P3 proposal entitled "Water Awareness Research and Education (WARE) - East Tampa." On Saturday August 16th, Dr. Trotz (ESW's faculty advisor) and ESW student members participated in the East Tampa Community Health Day held at the 18th street park. The chapter used hands on demonstrations to raise awareness of water related issues and gave out handouts that were donated from watermatters.org. More pictures can be seen by clicking here.
July 2008: Our lab hosted a high school teacher/student pair under thre Research Experience for Stuednts and Teachers program which is sponsored by the USF College of Engineering and The Project CLASS, a MSP grant awarded to Hillsborough county. Josh worked closely with graduate students Ken Thomas, Joniqua Howard and Erlande Omisca on a project that investigated the removal of phosphorous from aquaculture waste using a local test site for the collection of waste. The ability of commercially available mineral oxide sorbents to remove the waste was tested over the 5 week period. Josh also attended seminars and workshops every Wednesday to better prepare him for college. His energy and style left a long lasting impression on the group members who enjoyed working with him and his teacher.
May 2008: I observed the 10th UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB: www.unsgab.org) held in Tokyo, Japan. The board comprises individuals from around the world, representing NGO’s, governments, academia, and private institutions and is currently chaired by Willem Alexander, The Prince of Orange and His Imperial Highness, the Crown Prince of Japan is its Honorary President. Six action items of UNSGAB, known as the Hashimoto Action Plan (HAP) are: • Water Operators Partnerships (WOPs) Board meetings are held twice a year (May and November/December) in a host country willing to cover the meeting expenses. Observers are allowed into the meeting at their own expense, something that I have done for the November 2007 meeting in Bogota and May 2008 meeting in Tokyo with the support of the Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions at USF. I was invited to attend the meetings by Ms. Jocelyn Dow, a board member appointed by Mr. Kofi Annan. Ms. Dow is on the board of the Guyana Citizen’s Initiative, a Guyanese based NGO with which I collaborate.
April 2008: Going Green Tampa Bay and USF Sustain-A-Bull. Please see these links for details on this phenomenal week which culminated in a GREEN EXPO where USF President Genshaft signed onto the American University Presidents' Climate Initiative. ESWUSF EXPO Review and Going Green Tampa Bay.
Jan 2008: Professor Jim Mihelcic visited USF and gave a talk on "The Sustainable Revolution: Challenges or Opportunities?" He is the President of AEESP. View the talk here. July 2007: Along with 24 other faculty across the US, I attended ASCE's week long ExCEEd workshop: Excellence in Civil and Environmental Engineering Education. This week long immersion in teaching was held at NAU and the USF Civil and Environmental Engineering department sponsored my attendance. Faculty were placed into groups of 4 along with two mentors who had graduated from the program. We were exposed to many different teaching styles and learnt to write better syllabi, exams, board notes etc.. When not in a workshop setting with everyone, we were in our small groups "teaching" our peers and learnign from their critiques. These sessions were also video taped for us to review. Workshop presentations and details can be accessed here: http://www.asce.org/exceed/.
June 2007: I attended UNESCO-IHE's 50th Anniversary in Delft , Netherlands on behalf of the Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions. I signed a MOU on behalf of USF and partcipated in workshop discussions, including ones on water security.
May 2007: I co-chaired an outreach activity at the Florida Aquarium that brought 150 K-12 Tampa bay students there for the day to work with mentors on various projects related to water resources and water quality. A peer reviewed paper was presented at ASEE based on this activity:
. November 2006: Purdue University opened its Division of Ecological and Environmental Engineering and I was invited to participate in a workshop there on the goals and objectives of the division. The division is housed in the College of Engineering and includes all of the engineering departments. November 2006: I traveled to Guyana's Kanashen district with Conservation International as part of their Rapid Assessment Program (RAP). This 1.6 million acre site is owned by approximately 200 people belonging to the Wai Wai group. The headwaters of the Essequibo, the largest river running all the way to Guyana's coast, are located in Kanashen. In terms of water quality data, this site represents an upstream, pristine environment that can be compared with waters closer to the coast and gold mining districts. The RAP team included eight other scientists from the Smithsonian, Harvard, Oregon State, University of Maryland, Conservation International, the University of Louisiana, and La Salle Foundacion in Venezuela. Six parabiologists from the community were also trained as part of a Conservation International Guyana program. See pictures here. July 2006: I attended a Sustainability workshop at Carnegie Melon University. Conference details here. March 2006: WEE conference. January 2006: Students in my research group started the USF Chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World. The first meeting will be held on February 22nd, 2006 at 5:30 pm. Location TBA. ESWUSF.ORG September 2005: The new faculty at USF developed FUSER: Florida Universities Symposium on Environmental Research. This evolved into a full 2 day conference to host the AEESP 2007 Distinguished Lecture Series. The keynote speaker was Dr. René Schwarzenbach. Dr. Patrick Brezonik, NSF BES Program director, was an invited speaker. .I gave a talk there on lessons learned from the AEESP 2005 conference on sustainability initiatives at Universities. View power point slides here. Our students played a major role in organizing this conference and we met faculty and consultant from all over Florida. March 2005: Victor Rogers was a Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Iowa (currently at UC Santa Barbara) and I had met him at the October 2004 NSF conference. He organized my visit to the University of Iowa to (1) and (2) let me meet the faculty in the home of Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T). I gave a seminar in the environmental engineering department who hosted me for most of the visit. The schedule was packed as I had 30 minute meetings with most of the faculty there including Dr. Jerry Schnoor, the Editor of Environmental Science and Technology. Dr. Gene Parkin was my host and though I knew his name and had used his text book, I had never met him. I spent lunch with the students in the program and also had a meeting with students in the Environmental Engineering group. I got a tour of the lab facilities. Their analytical lab is pretty much 1 room packed with equipment that is managed by a technical staff member. It seems highly efficient in term of space and money. After the seminar we went to a bar for drinks. This seems to be a regular event for faculty and students in the department. February 2005: The QEM/NSF sponsored workshop for Minority faculty on the NSF CAREER proposal was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the neat things about this meeting was a small discussion group headed by an NSF Program Director (Dr. Ortega). Prior to the meeting we submitted a 1 page summary of the scope of our CAREER proposal so the program director had a chance to make comments. During this session we exchanged proposals with 1 person and then discussed the various aspects in an open forum. There are many benefits to meeting a Program Director in this small setting including being recommended to serve on a NSF review panel. One of the CAREER awardees in the Environmental field was Tobagonian, Dr. Garrick Louis from the University of Virginia. October 2004: I attended a NSF conference for new Minority faculty in engineering held at NSF. This conference provided alot of information to the new faculty from funding opportunities to things that affect under represented women faculty in engineering. Alesia Ferguson, a colleague from the Leckie group at Stanford who is teaching at the University of Arkansas Medical School in the College of Public Health, and I actually video taped most of the sessions. It may be wishful thinking that these will be edited and made available on the web, but I do have the mini DVs if anyone wants to borrow them. Given that the conference was at NSF headquarters we were able to meet our specific program directors. you must submit your resume and application form to be considered on a review panel. For the environmental engineering field I was also told that the AEESP database is a major source of review panelists. Robert Ofoli was responsible for this conference and the site can be found here. Other environmental engineering Professors there included Stanford colleague Dr. Lupita Montoya at RPI and Dr. Keith Moo-Young at Villanova University. |
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Mahdia
