Rowan University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

The Department of Geography, Planning, and Sustainability's Urban Geography courses ask students to engage with public spaces on campus and activate them. Each year, the class undertakes different projects that simultaneously help them understand how people interact in public spaces and help the student organization, RUSPO (Rowan University Student Planning Organization), to target areas in need of placemaking efforts. An example of a project from the Spring 2023 semester: Students decided to engage the Rowan Community at the Red Gazebo on campus and ask people to consider their emotional reaction to being close to water bodies. This specific consideration stemmed from faculty research and interest in public access to water bodies. The event was student-planned and run.

Sound Planet Music Festival

The E3 project, which stands for Educate, Empower and Employ, will focus on educating future generations about their environment, specifically renewable energy, and climate change. E3 will engage local K-12 students and educators, college students and community members to increase public awareness and knowledge about climate change and renewable energy. It will also promote environmental stewardship, and practice skills required for developing a sustainable and low-carbon future. Students and teachers at local county colleges and members of environmental education non-profit organizations will engage in topics that include air pollution, wind, and tidal energy. All project participants will be called upon to think critically about ways to reduce the carbon footprint in their respective communities.

Sustainable Facilities Center -Building SMS

The center helps public and private entities sustainably manage facilities by reducing the environmental, economic, and social impacts of buildings. The faculty associated with the SFC have worked on sustainable facilities projects since before 2004. These efforts resulted in the founding of the SFC in 2018. Assistance offered by SFC includes: BUILDER SMS implementation; Building energy & water audits; 3D laser scans of building interiors & exteriors; Building information modeling using Autodesk Revit; Facility management using FacilityDude; Energy outreach and planning; Installation Status Reports; Solar and wind assessments.

Facilities Management - NJDMAVA/NJARNG - SFC assists the NJ Department of Military and Veteran Affairs as it sustainably manages its facilities in New Jersey. This includes implementation and management of an online work order system, performing site visits to collect data and recommending preventative maintenance. Additional activities may include monitoring energy, water, and sewage flows, conducting life cycle assessments to identify the best options for equipment repair and replacement, verifying energy savings from implemented efficiency measures, or performing energy security inspections. This project supports one clinic each semester, open to all majors.

Research Track 1 - Community Food (systems + environment + security)

About this track​

This track focuses on community food systems, food environment, and food security. As part of this track, we have investigated several sub-topics, including:

* How urban food environments are created and how or why they vary in different communities;

* How community food insecurity can be assessed holistically;

* The role of urban agriculture in achieving food security, food justice, and community development;

* The challenges associated with community food insecurity and urban food production; and

* Critical assessments of the role of community gardens in minority and disadvantaged communities.

Dr. Jennifer Kitson's Smell Art class installed a native smell garden outside of Westby Hall. The class also spoke with the school's landscape architect and learned about the struggles to maintain pesticide/herbicide free spaces on campus grounds.

The Last Mile Solution: Improving Health & Access to Transportation for Camden’s Vulnerable Populations - The goal is to convert Camden into a smart, connected community in terms of its transportation… The project’s title refers to the gaps commuters in urban areas frequently experience traveling between their homes and public transportation hubs. For those without their own vehicles or for those with physical limitations, this portion of the daily commute is often the least reliable and most time-consuming. Jalayer and his student research assistants will spend the next year studying the traveling habits of Camden’s residents to determine ways to better connect them to easily accessible transportation. The results will be gathered in a comprehensive report available to the public, and presented to local and state officials.

DIVING INTO HYDROGEN ENERGY

Rowan University has been named one of the education partners supporting the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2), alongside the University of Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. Selected by the U.S. Department of Energy, MACH2 is building a network of hydrogen producers, consumers, and local connective infrastructure in Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and South Jersey. The hub will support the production, storage, delivery, and end-use of clean hydrogen, a pollutant-free energy. The Chemical Engineering department is leading the effort at Rowan in the area of workforce development for a clean hydrogen economy. This involves developing new undergraduate and graduate level certificate programs with courses on hydrogen processing as well as hydrogen-related research opportunities for engineering clinic programs and Ph.D. students. The plan is for initial hydrogen energy courses to be available in Fall 2024 or Spring 2025. These efforts will support and accelerate the Chemical Engineering department’s mission in developing technological innovations and a future workforce for a more sustainable environment.

Rowan is also partnering with Bioenergy Devco, a company that converts waste biomass into renewable natural gas, to build a pilot plant designed to convert waste material into biogas and hydrogen at the South Jersey Technology Park in Mullica Hill

WaterWorks: Innovative Exposure to Careers in Water/Wastewater Utilities - A USEPA funded project titled WaterWorks aimed at exposing careers in water and wastewater utilities to K-12 educators and students is currently in progress. WaterWorks, consists of four contemporary core K-12 educational modules titled WaterMobile, WaterTalk, WaterPal and WaterCave to excite the next generation to join our nations water/wastewater workforce. All four components are designed to excite the next generation to pursue careers related to the needs of the water/wastewater industry. There is a dire need for a new diverse workforce as the current workforce is reaching the retirement age. We are partnering with area schools, water and wastewater utilities and non-profit organizations to expose careers via hands on activities, videos, and presentations. Activities are also mapped in sync with the New Jersey Science Standards to assist educators also.

Web mapping platforms for community planning and engagement: lessons learned from NJ MAP (2022) - Two graduate students from the Urban and Regional Planning program—Katrina McCarthy and Christopher Tirri—have published a book chapter and a peer-reviewed journal article respectively. Katrina is the lead author of the chapter “Web mapping platforms for community planning and engagement: lessons learned from NJ MAP” in the 2022 book titled “Smart Cities and Smart Communities: Empowering Citizens through Intelligent Technologies,” edited by Patnaik, Sen, and Ghosh and published by Springer. Katrina collaborated with Professors John Hasse and Mahbubur Meenar on this book chapter. Here is a link to the chapter: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-19-1146-0_11.

Chosen Family (2023) - Throughout our clinic project, we investigated “chosen family,” a collective network of people outside of students’ traditional families that can provide support through knowledge, resources, and guidance. In the engineering education environment, chosen family members consist of professors, mentors, peers, and coworkers, among others. As part of this project we researched chosen family and marginalized groups within the peer reviewed literature and developed an initial survey. The survey has now been administered within the College of Engineering to determine who engineering students perceive as part of their chosen families. Through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion, our goal was to understand minoritized students’ plight in navigating engineering education. Ultimately, we hope to identify the relationship between success in engineering students and chosen family and share our results with the broader engineering education community.

NJ DMAVA Energy and Water Use Audits (2023) - Student teams have performed site visits to six different NJ DMAVA buildings throughout the state. At these visits, students measured indoor air temperature, air quality, and lighting levels, took thermal images of the building envelope, identified devices that use electricity and water, and studied the HVAC system. In addition to the site visit, the teams studied building plans and utility bills. These observations allowed the students to create building simulations to analyze and model both energy and water use. Based on familiarity with the building, candidate measures to reduce energy and water use, as well as opportunities to generate clean energy on site through solar power were identified. The models for energy and water use were then used to evaluate each candidate measure for potential savings, C02 emission reduction, and return on investment. These recommendations help NJ DMAVA to operate their facilities in an efficient manner.

Stress and Coping Mechanisms of Undergraduate Engineers (2023) - When first attending college, it is difficult to adjust to the increased pace and workload compared to other types of education and the difficulty increases as students progress through their desired degree path. The change in learning can be difficult to manage. Learning to manage the stress that comes along with higher education is essential for keeping on track to graduate. The goal of this study is to understand how students manage their stress and the causes of their stress. Specifically looking at undergraduate engineering students we want to answer the following research questions: (1) How stressed are engineering students, (2) is there a common cause of stress, if so what is it? and (3) How do engineering students manage their stress and which method(s) are most effective? Using a survey that asked Rowan engineering students to identify their top five sources of stress and top five coping mechanisms, we found that the most frequently cited stressors are mental health, grades, and work/life balance. Additionally, we were able to categorize student coping mechanisms as healthy or unhealthy and showed that students who reported less stress used more healthy coping mechanisms than students who reported higher levels of stress.