Calvin College

Case Study

Calvin Environmental Assessment Program (CEAP)

The Role of CEAP in Courses

The CEAP program has great flexibility in terms of its incorporation into courses.  The structure of CEAP allows for maximum creativity among faculty and extensive impact on students while requiring a minimum time commitment by either.  For example, faculty can frame CEAP projects in terms of course material and needs.  One freshman English composition course was entirely organized around CEAP subject matter, while most science courses include particular lab exercises.  The range of types of courses and course activities related to CEAP, the differing levels of research and engagement, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and its relationship to the community is illustrated in the following example: 

In August of 1998, a two-acre pond on Calvin's main campus experienced an unprecedented fish die-off.  Within a 24 hour period approximately 2000 fish expired, and were left floating on the surface of the pond.  Shortly thereafter unhappy neighbors called to complain of the smell and wondered what had happened to provoke such an incident.  Motivated by the fish-dying event, a Biology faculty member developed a CEAP project for a course.  The work of his students led to the conclusion that the likely cause of this algal bloom was the runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus from urban fertilizers.  This pond is the immediate water detention basin for storm water runoff from the surrounding neighborhood.  A popular practice in this suburban community is to fertilize lawn areas in late summer and it was surmised that unusually heavy rain events prior to the algal bloom had washed many of the lawn nutrients directly into the pond, stimulating algal growth.

This particular event and the accumulated data were presented at the CEAP Poster Session in November, and interest in the issue was heightened.  The following spring, an Honors English 100 class became engaged in a CEAP project that focused on producing a neighborhood newsletter for all homeowners within the watershed that drains into these ponds.  The newsletter emphasized the importance of understanding the function of watersheds and it highlighted the incident of dead fish, along with its likely cause.

In this newsletter homeowners were encouraged to change their behavior by decreasing their lawn fertilizing applications or by using an alternative fertilizer that is recommended for yards that are adjacent to sensitive wetlands.  Homeowners that emptied their swimming pools directly into the storm drains were also asked to allow their pool water to settle for a sufficient time before it is drained, thereby diminishing the amount of chlorine that may be entering the pond.  As a result, several neighbors contacted Calvin before emptying pools to ensure the college that they had allowed the chlorine to evaporate. 

In an attempt to further address this issue, a senior engineering design team selected this issue as their year-long project in the fall of 1999.  Four engineering students, along with a Biology student, became fully engaged with this issue and presented the administration with a state-of-the-art storm water treatment system proposal.  This design utilized a series of levees and shallow water areas planted in native vegetation to filter out potential contaminants before they reached the pond itself.   The administration seriously considered this plan, but due mostly to space constraints, opted for a simpler, less comprehensive storm water treatment basin.  This plan led to the construction of an earthen berm that holds back the storm water runoff in a detention pond, the overflow of which leads into the larger pond itself.  Although this was initially disappointing to the design team and to others involved in this issue, it did signify a positive step towards improving the water quality of pond.  During the negotiations, the administration pledged funds to create an extensive native wildflower planting on the berm.  During the summer of 2000 six students worked with two CEAP professors for two weeks, re-contouring and planting this berm with over 2000 transplanted native wildflowers and grasses, as well as more than 20 pounds of native plant seed.  The water in this pond has become regularly monitored by an introductory honors Chemistry lab every fall.

The planting itself was designed to facilitate future experimentation and monitoring.  This particular project has attracted the attention of the municipality into which the water from the pond eventually flows.  While not realizing the full capacity of the engineering students’ original plan, this project has been cited as an example to the broader community of an environmentally sensitive strategy for improving water quality in the broader watershed.

 

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