Education & Outreach

The Education & Outreach (E&O) mission of the CEB is to integrate cross-disciplinary training into the very fabric of graduate and postdoctoral careers in BioMicroElectronics and Environmental Biotechnology; thereby, developing versatile professionals that rapidly exploit the fast pace of information and technology development across fields. These professionals will synthesize new insights, approaches and technologies across disciplines to meet the growing interdisciplinary R&D demands of academia and industry. The success of CEB’s training model is validated by NRC and DOE Alexander Hollaender postdoctoral fellowship awards; academic positions at Institutions, such as Cornell University, Purdue University and Syracuse University; and industrial posts at companies, such as Merck, BASF and Monsanto that have been achieved by recent graduates.

The education and training component of the CEBs mission is highly nested in the graduate education of students engaged in funded research, and has benefited greatly over the past 12 years from support from the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (now called the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, or ISSE). Forms of support have been the graduate fellowships and supplemental stipends awarded to outstanding doctoral candidates whose research focuses on waste-related themes, assistantships in interdisciplinary science and engineering research, postdoctoral research fellowships and lab-based training experience for undergraduate students. The Research Center for Excellence designation recently awarded by UT to the CEB will allow more of these types of research opportunities to be available for graduate students and new postdoctoral positions.

As part of field studies of contaminant migration and remediation, CEB engages in dialogue with community stakeholders, that may occur through existing grassroot community, environmental, educational and/or developmental organizations. Researchers from the College of Social Work and ISSE have collaborated with CEB on a project funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to look at environmental justice issues Chattanooga Creek area, building on past field study of the extent of polyaromatic hydrocarbon contamination in the Alton Park community. In this process, a partnership was formed among UT, the Alton Park Development Corporation and the Southside/Dodson Avenue Community Health Center, known as the Alton Park/Piney Woods Environmental Health and Justice Collaborative. This outreach framework allows a mechanism for using university educational and technical resources to help community groups understand the technical issues involving the hazardous waste sites in their midst, and allows the empowerment of communities in order to successfully participate in the decision-making process regarding their hazardous substance problems.

Other outreach projects by CEB researchers have included the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program (Biogeochemical Research Experiences - South Africa, or BEE-SA), which brought African-American and South African undergraduates together to engage in research being conducted by CEB, Princeton and the United States Geological Survey in ultradeep gold and platinum mines. U.S. mentors from educational institutions and U.S. national laboratories collaborated with South African faculty, industrial representatives, and postdoctoral associates to conduct workshops, lead expeditions underground to collect samples for analysis of microbiological, geochemical and molecular parameters, and develop papers and presentations with the students from REU research results.

Beginning in 2003, BEE-SA researchers collaborated with Indiana University in the NASA-funded Indiana-Princeton-Tennessee Astrobiology Institute's (IPTAI) project, “Detection of Biosustainable Energy and Nutrient Cycles in the Deep Subsurface of Earth and Mars." IPTAI E&O emphasized educational workshops for undergraduates and high school teachers where participants actively collect and interpret data from laboratory and field experiments; public outreach through a Web site illustrating how and why scientists conduct research in deep mines; and mentoring undergraduate and graduate research. Currently, CEB/IPTAI researchers are teaming with Tennessee State University on the NSF-funded project, "Astrobiology in the Secondary Classroom Project: An interdisciplinary curriculum developed by a collaboration of scientists and educators from three different minority communities." This is a three-year project to develop and validate an astrobiology curriculum with high school students who areunderrepresented in STEM activities, and to train and support teachers who implement this curriculum.

For more information, contact Susan Pfiffner or Kim Davis.