cooperative education
Edited by &OFFEY DAVIES ALAN L. MCCLELLAND
Environmental Analysis: A Real World Experience Francis Healy' Southampton College of Long Island University, Southampton. NY 11968
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This month's column is the winning entry from the 1980 ACS h p Essay Contest. The contest is open to chemistry or biochemistry m a i m enrolled in a Droaram ieadina to a baccalaureate-level deqree who have . comoleted one semester or auarters of m i d work sxierience under the auspices of a formal. SUpeNlSea c w p program. Tne 1980 Contest was SPO~SOIB(I by induslrd firms and ACS grodps and organized oy Or. Roben R dgway. Manager. ACS Onice a l Cooperative Eamation. Francis Healy wrote his winning entry while a student at Southampton College, a Center of Long Island University. New York. Southampton College has a thriving program of over 100 full semester internships. Its program in EnvironmentalScience is panicularly well known and popular with students: it is the subject of the winning entry.
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Southampton College of Long Island University is a rather small school, located about twenty miles from Montauk Point on Long Island's South Fork. Among the outstanding features of Southampton College is its Co-op Education Program. My experience with this Program beg& during my first (freshman) semester a t Southampton when I began planning my co-op experience with the Director of the Program. That following March I was working as a Physical Science Aid a t the US. Environmental Protection Agency's Oil and Hazardous Materials Spills Laboratory a t Edison, New Jersev. ~ooperAiveEducation offers the student an opportunity to work in his field of interest. eainine valuable ex~erienceand knowledge of that field. EPA< Oil &d ~ a z a r d o hMaterials Snills Rrdnch IOHMSB) laboratory offers the ro-ODstudent & excellent oiportunityto learn some of the praetid aspect8 of applied analytical chemistry. The OHMSB laboratory in Edison is a small lab, part of the Municipal Environmental Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio. I t has three main functions. First, it develops rapid analysis techniques (for field use in a mobile lab as well as for in-house use) in order to deal with spills of oil and hazardous materials. Secondly, it assists in the development of equipment to deal with oil and Hazardous Materials spills; and finally it renders technical assistance to regional offices of EPA in an emergency situation. The job of the co-op student a t the OHMSB laboratory amounts to the evervdav of the lab. Upon arrival, . . o~eration . the co-op student receives a course (ahout one week) in the runnine of the lab and in the techniques of analysis with which he willke working. Over the next few weeks the co-op student is assigned more and more responsibilities and is then introon which he will be working. ducedvto the particular The proiects consist mostly of methods development. The prim&ybroject I worked on concerned the development of an effective and rapid method to analyze for volatile organics in water using a purge and trap autosampler mounted on a gas chromatograph. Although this technique is not new, a method for its use. takine into account limitations of time. soace. . . and personnelrestr
