Comment▼ The environmental engineering and science paradox: can we solve big problems with small investments?
T
he scientific and environmental challenges of the 21st century are grand and loom on the horizon like a threatening storm that could impact our quality of life and even life on earth as we know it. Renewable energy, climate change and global warming, the water crisis, urbanization and infrastructure, food safety, biodiversity, epidemics and disease, disasters, and security are all “talked about”. These are global problems, and they are big ones. What’s ironic is that I have found the intellectual and scientific capacity as well as the enthusiasm, innovation, and vigor to answer the questions, solve the problems, and further the global scientific leadership in our universities’ programs in environmental engineering and sciences. Yet, the budgets for science, math, and engineering to address environmental problems under the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. EPA, and the National Institutes of Health are not commensurate with the enormity of the issues. I have had a unique opportunity. Over the past 8 months, I have visited 20 university campuses in Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Canada, spending 2 days on each campus with faculty and students engaged in the arena of environmental engineering and science. I visited their laboratories and their field sites and learned about their research, centers, institutes, and colleges. Each campus is distinct and has its own legacy of excellence, and as I strolled across each of them, I was in awe of the architecture (the new and the old). In particular, I found an atmosphere full of excitement and optimism, where learning and problem solving are embraced. The field of environmental engineering and science furthers the understanding of environmental degradation and impact at all scales (from nano to global and from minutes to millennia) and addresses technologies and approaches for solving these problems and ultimately for the protection of human and ecosystem health. This is a scientific arena that by its nature is interdisciplinary, where biology, chemistry, geology, hydrology, and engineering converge. It is an arena that moves readily from the laboratory to the real world and embraces engaged research with the community, at local and global levels. Several key common themes have emerged with regard to excellence within universities.
© 2007 American Chemical Society
• Leadership. In almost all cases, the activities and opportunities within environmental engineering and science are championed by either the dean or the president of the university. This includes obtaining new infrastructure and faculty positions. • Infrastructure. New state-of-the-art buildings and complexes are being built or have been built. These often include microbiology and molecular laboratories; a focus on new technological areas, including nanotechnology; and facilities to handle large data sets for information science (climate, remote sensing, and modeling facilities). • Cluster hires. Investment is being made in the hiring of a number of assistant and associate professors—young people who bring directly from their own educational experience new tools (molecular techniques), interdisciplinary training, and, most importantly, vitality and ideas. • Centers. Both Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) and NSF centers are important for fostering new interdisciplinary research and making specific impacts on education (as the students themselves told me) and in outreach to the community. • Global research. The global scale of some of the issues is apparent to the scientists and particularly the students. Students are interested in undertaking research in other parts of the world, but funding for these activities is very limited. • Molecular biology. Genomics and molecular tools are now playing a larger role in the field of environmental engineering and science. Toxicogenomics, bioremediation, biofuels, and/or the genetics of environmental microbial pathogens are integrated into >75% of the programs. I met Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently, and he asked me whether environmental engineering and science professionals could solve global warming. My answer, Sen. Reid, is YES and much more, but investments must be made by national leaders in research and education; university administrators must provide leadership and support infrastructure and human resources; and those of us in the “tenure” system must reward interdisciplinary research. Joan B. Rose Michigan State University
[email protected] AUGUST 1, 2007 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 5165
