Woodard Laboratory: a Hub of Learning in Environmental Engineering

Since the opening of the Franklin E. Woodard Environmental Engineering Laboratory in Boardman Hall, the facility has served as the venue for a variety of educational and outreach events. The laboratory is the regular home of undergraduate and graduate class laboratories, which allow students to test environmental principles and water and waste treatment schemes. In combination with field trips to working facilities and remediation field sites, these laboratory projects and experiments help transform engineering theory into practice.

During school breaks and in the summer, the lab is often used for events like Expanding Your Horizons, a day-long conference for middle school girls. This program allows girls to do hands-on math and science activities, and learn more about how math and science are used in a variety of engineering and scientific careers. One such activity is our non-point source pollution model of the Penobscot River (below). We developed this model to illustrate how pollution moves through a watershed. The girls participating in the program discuss pollution sources associated with different kinds of land use, and apply different kinds of "pollution" to the appropriate areas on the model. We then simulate a rain storm, observe what happens to the pollution and explore the factors that result in more or less water pollution and environmental impact.

Upward Bound and Consider Engineering programs are also housed in the lab during the summer. Both programs provide research experiences for high school students. The pictures show high school students in the Consider Engineering program doing a research project to determine how effectively a novel sorbent based on a polymer found in crab and lobster shells removes copper from water.

The laboratory was renovated in 2002 with help from the University and our alumni. Operation of the lab is supported by the generous help of Woodard and Curran, Inc.