Hundreds of UMBC undergraduates are
fulfilling their laboratory science requirement by getting their feet
wet. They are enrolling in Water: An Interdisciplinary Study, a
hands-on lab and lecture course that uses the theme of water to explore
the process of science. The course, created by Karin Readel, a
lecturer in UMBC's interdisciplinary science program, allows students to
work together in small groups to design experiments and analyze results,
using the campus as an outdoor ecological laboratory. Student projects
have included water analysis of the library pond, the Pig Pen Pond, and
the Herbert Run stream on campus, and the course brings together the
fields of biology, chemistry, earth sciences, and physics to focus on
real-world investigations of water.
The course, which Readel designed for non-science majors (meeting the
State of Maryland's requirement that all students complete a laboratory
science course) is proving wildly popular, with more than 400 students
signing up each year to get their sneakers soaked. |
