ENVR 757, Bioremediation Spring, 1999

Additional materials may be placed on reserve at Hagerty Library or distributed in class, as appropriate. Students may find the following sources of information useful:

About the Class: The industrial age has brought with it both good and evil. Perhaps one of the longest-lasting legacies of our age will be the destructive impact human activities have had on the environment. Toxic and hazardous wastes in particular have been routinely disposed of by improper means over the past several decades, and even today contamination of groundwater, surface water, soils and sediments is widespread throughout the industrialized world.

Nature has found many ways to fight back, however, and numerous microbial mechanisms can break down otherwise toxic compounds. In addition, humans have developed engineered systems that take advantage of these microbial processes to enhance and accelerate the otherwise slow processes of decomposition. Engineered systems also take advantage of physical and chemical characteristics as well as the abilities of microbes. Even so, significant roadblocks remain towards finding acceptable solutions, especially at the most seriously contaminated sites. An understanding of the strengths and limitations of remediation technologies depends on understanding the fundamental processes at work in these systems.

In this course, we will review the principals of microbiology, chemistry and hydrology and how they can be harnessed to clean up contaminated sites. It should be noted that it is not possible to divorce microbial activities from the physical and chemical processes occurring in the environment, and so discussion will integrate topics from each of these areas. This integration is reflected in the actual technologies used, and often similar technologies are modified to emphasize microbiological, chemical or physical removal processes. Because of this, we will discuss a broad range of site cleanup technologies.

Grading and Assignments:

There will be one midterm exam and one final exam, each of which count 30% towards the course grade.

• Students must prepare a research paper, due at the end of the term, and must also give a presentation to the class on their report. The paper and presentation count a total of 30% towards the course grade: the paper counts 20% and the presentation 10%. Please note that topics, outlines and final reports are due on the dates indicated on the syllabus.
  
  It is worth noting that I have generally given higher grades to papers when I learned something new. Simply elaborating on what is already in the text or on what is widely known will not generally earn a high grade. In addition, please see the notice regarding plagiarism below.
  
• Weekly Research Summaries: Before each class, students must go to the library and look through research journals and find a paper related to that week's topic (or a closely related subject). The paper must be a description of actual research or the implementation of a technology to a given site, not a review article or commentary. Gray-literature reports discussing the application of a technology to a specific project will only be acceptable if the academic content is high. After reading the article, the student must prepare a ONE PAGE (maximum) typewritten summary of the article to be turned in at the end of the class. YOU MUST ALSO PROVIDE A PHOTOCOPY OF THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE. Several students will be selected during class each week to share their findings with the group. The instructor will review the summaries and articles and return them, although no specific grade is usually put on the assignments. Students will receive credit for the assignment provided their summary gives a full description of the research. As time permits, I will photocopy your one-page summaries and place them on reserve at the library. You may wish to review the various research summaries for insight into current research.

Any delays in completing assignments should be brought to instructor's attention BEFORE the due date or exam date! Course grades will be assigned based on the following distribution:

NOTICE REGARDING PLAGIARISM:

With the advent of the internet, it has become remarkably easy to obtain a wide range of materials from many sources that were previously inaccessible or available only with great effort. While this has proven to be a boon to scholarship, it has also led a number of students down the path of temptation towards the crime of plagiarism. Students should remember that the availability of full-text academic search engines now makes it as easy to detect plagiarism as it is to copy the writings of others.

Students are hereby forewarned that selected passages from the materials they submit will be entered into academic and internet search engines in order to detect incidents of plagiarism. Plagiarism will not be tolerated in this class, and will result in an immediate grade of "F" for the course. Students found to plagiarize will also be referred to the Judicial Affairs Committee and may have permanent entries placed on their transcripts or be expelled from the University. Students are advised to review the discussion of plagiarism in the student handbook: works that are submitted as a student's own writing must be their words alone. Any text taken verbatim from other sources must be properly identified as quotation, and thoughts paraphrased or originating in the works of others must be referenced to the original source.

Tentative Schedule
ENVR 757 Bioremediation
Spring, 1999

Text: Suthersan, Remediation Engineering, CRC Press, 1997. Supplemental materials as assigned.