Engineering Commons^™

Integrating Biological Principles In Environmental Engineering Education: Summary Results Of A Three-Year Pilot Study, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Teaching biology to engineers is a challenge. For environmental engineers, biological principles are necessary to understand microorganisms that are removed from drinking water as well as microorganisms that treat waste in sewage treatment plants and bioremediation field sites. At the University of Cincinnati, we integrated state-of-the-art research in environmental microbiology within our graduate and undergraduate environmental engineering curricula. For the past three years, we taught a novel course entitled, "Molecular Biology in Environmental Engineering." Course evaluations over the past three years suggested that the course was successful for primarily two reasons, namely: (1) the course employed a problem-based learning approach …