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Workshops

AEESP2025 programming will include workshops that span a range of topics in research, education, public engagement, and career development in the environmental sciences and engineering. Workshops are planned over the entire 3-days of the conference. Attendees can register for workshops during the conference registration process

Tuesday afternoon, May 20, 2025

Description:

The AEESP Student & Postdoc Services   Committee (SPSC) plans to continue the tradition of conducting career-oriented workshops for graduate students and postdocs.  This workshop will be divided into three timed sessions. The workshop will be composed of a series of interactive panel discussions with members representing various career paths available to environmental engineers and scientists after their graduate degrees: academic, national lab, consulting, government positions, and entrepreneurship. The panelists will share their experiences in their respective career paths, and the audience will have a chance to ask questions to the panelists. Each session will include a discussion followed by a Q&A session, moderated by SPSC members.

Workshop Organizers:

Fabrizio Sabba, Renzun Zhao, Sai Pamuru, Marzieh Shojaei, Isaac Musaazi

Description:

This workshop will educate audience members on how to build a successful NSF CAREER proposal.  Workshop leaders and an NSF representative will provide guidance on the program’s purpose, structure, process, and research aims.  A panel of recent award winners will provide the audience with lessons learned from their award applications. The audience will have ample opportunity to ask questions to the NSF representative and panelists and to seek more personalized feedback on their proposal ideas.

Workshop Organizers:

Karen Dannemiller and Philip Larese-Casanova

Description:

The AEESP Environmental Engineering Program Leaders Committee (EEPLC) strives to provide a platform for connections between the leaders of departments and programs with a focus on environmental engineering. As part of their activities, the EEPLC facilitates the sharing of knowledge and resources to grow and strengthen environmental engineering programs, enables networking opportunities between program leaders, and supports opportunities for interaction with relevant professional societies and organizations (e.g., AAEES, ASCE, ABET, ASEE, ACS, AGU, ASM). This workshop will feature the following program:
  1. Welcome (Kurt Pennell)
  2. NSF Advance Program – Cliff Davidson (60 min)
  3. Faculty Mentoring Program – Nicole Fahrenfeld (30 min)
  4. ABET Update – Chuck Haas (30 min)
  5. Incorporating Sustainability in Curricula – Matt Fraser (30 min)
  6. MS/Programs Teaching Resources -Tim Vadas (30 Min)

Workshop Organizers:

Kurt Pennell

Description:

This workshop will provide an opportunity for faculty and students to learn how to incorporate community engaged research (CER) projects into their course curriculum and research activities. Case studies demonstrating varying levels of community engagement will be highlighted to review lessons learned and future opportunities. These projects will be assessed using a community engaged research (CER) scorecard. Participants will develop a brief synopsis of their either already existing or potential CER projects and future opportunities to become more engaged in CER. Participants will identify one area in their research or curriculum where community-based research can be initiated. Participants will work through a scorecard consisting of 9 priorities for community engaged research. For each priority, projects will be categorized on whether they are below, meet or exceed expectations. Participants will be divided into working groups to explore ways to implement community-based projects into their curriculum and research projects.

Worskhop Organizers:

Michelle Henderson, Maya  Trotz, Christian Wells, Lafe Eastman, and Dominique Cobb

Description:

This session applies social justice and equity perspectives to strengths-based faculty development.  Participants will apply culturally informed, strengths-based practices to case studies and will reflect on further applications. The introduction will be an overview of our project and Clifton Strengths. (Participants should take Clifton Strengths ($60) in advance and bring their reports). Next we will introduce the “academic wheel of privilege”. Participants will generate draft positionality statements to elucidate intersectional identities. Participants will investigate their strengths profiles and reflect how their identities influence the expression of their strengths. After a short break, we will use vignettes of faculty experiences and descriptions of their major strengths and intersectional identities.  We will discuss how faculty’s cultural experiences impact their experience of their institutions, and how consciously applying strengths may help their thriving.  Participants will compare and contrast strengths-based and deficit-based thinking. To close, the group will discuss applying strengths-based development to faculty work. Participants will identify their own next actions.

Workshop Organizers:

Monica Palomo, Victoria Bhavsar, and April Dawn

Description:

The objective of this workshop is to develop best practices for inclusive classrooms while incorporating innovative teaching strategies such as GenAI, community-based learning (CBL), and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) into their courses. First, guest speakers will provide evidence-based best practices for innovative teaching and learning strategies. Next, participants will join working groups in their area of interest (GenAI, CBL, etc.) where they will explore the use of these innovative strategies in their own classrooms and draft a set of best practices for incorporating these teaching practices into environmental engineering and science courses which can be shared with the broader AEESP community.

Workshop Organizers:

Hanyang Li, Jessica Wilson, Matthew Verbyla, Nick Tooker, Mara London, Susan Masten, Stephanie Laughton, and Randi Brazeau

Description:

Since 2020, the AEESP community has been translating research in wastewater surveillance to public health action. This effort has not been without challenges. We will facilitate adaptation of these challenges to lessons learned for our community. This session will be the culmination of four years of community building through the NSF-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) on Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 and Emerging Health Threats. Many members of the AEESP community have advanced the field of wastewater surveillance from a research topic to a tool that public health officials rely on. In effect, this community has translated research to valuable public health information in an unprecedented timeframe.
This session will serve as a reflection on the expansion of wastewater surveillance and on stakeholder engagement. The first hour will be a panel discussion with leaders of the field describing their experiences engaging public health departments and industry. The panel will set the tone for participants to share challenges with research translation. The second hour will serve as a workshop where the audience (based on both the panel discussion and their own experiences) will be invited to develop a living document with lessons learned that can be translated to other fields relevant to the AEESP community. The document will be collated and posted on the RCN website after the conference has concluded.

Workshop Organizers:

Jeseth Delgado Vela, Kyle Bibby, Alexandria Boehm, and Rolf Halden

Description:

Organized by the Association of Chinese American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES) in the collaboration with the Government Affair Committee (GAC) of AEESP, this workshop aims to provide a forum for discussion on international collaboration between US-based scholars and international scholars/institutions. Many environmental challenges, such as climate change, pollutions, and biodiversity loss, require collaborative efforts toward global solutions. However, international collaborations across many disciplines are facing growing challenges. This workshop will cover the opportunities and challenges of international collaborations on addressing global environmental issues. CAPEES and GAC plan to invite speakers and panelists from academia, university administration, and/or federal funding agencies to share their knowledge and insights on maintaining and promoting healthy international collaboration within compliance.

Workshop Organizers:

Xing Xie, Tiezheng Tong, Renzun Zhao, Jingqiu Liao, and Kaisen Lin

Wednesday afternoon, May 21, 2025

*Please note that technical sessions will run concurrently with the workshops at this time

Description:

Applying ML techniques to environmental data without a sufficient understanding of dataset size needed, input features involved, preprocessing and training requirements, pros/cons of different algorithms, etc. can result in incorrect/misleading conclusions – at worst impacting trust in scientific outputs and ability of our community to translate research into practice. Our target audience is graduate students (at any stage) and faculty, particularly to (1) support the community in assessing whether ML tools are appropriate for their target applications and (2) if so, gain confidence in how and where to start, and learn best practices in using ML tools. This workshop will be part “success story” demonstrations, part tutorial, and part brainstorming session and will clearly separate the conceptual assessment and design from the implementation, giving the audience opportunities to practice both sets of skills through brainstorming and coding exercises.

Workshop Organizers:

Amy Mueller, Branko Kerkez, Kathryn Newhart, and Huichun (Judy) Zhang

Description:

This interactive, two-part workshop will provide participants with training and resources to effectively leverage their research, teaching, and expertise to inform policy decisions related to public safety and environmental quality. Designed for all attendees, this workshop will demystify “science-for-policy” processes and practices while encouraging scholars to incorporate strategic policy engagement into their research design and dissemination. Participants will benefit from the diverse experiences of the workshop facilitators, each of whom will share their respective challenges and successes incorporating their knowledge, skills, and tools into public policy design and deliberations. In Part 1, workshop facilitators will demonstrate the creation of a “policy ecosystem map” that describes the primary stakeholders in policy ecosystems and unique characteristics of jurisdictions, priorities, and needs. Participants will receive practical recommendations for identifying and evaluating policy stakeholders relevant to their own areas of research and expertise before working in small groups to begin creating a policy ecosystem map to guide future engagement. In Part 2, workshop facilitators will present an extensive menu of engagement mechanisms proven to be impactful for incorporating research and expertise into public policy deliberations.

Workshop Organizers:

Drew Story and Christy Prouty

Thursday afternoon, May 22, 2025

*Please note that technical sessions will run concurrently with the workshops at this time

Description:

The target audience for the workshop includes graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who plan to teach in environmental engineering programs as well as experienced instructors in these programs. The overall goal of the workshop is to enable participants to develop new courses or revise existing courses to include sustainability content related to the course technical material. Such courses will help students appreciate the role of engineers in transitioning society to preserve the life-sustaining capacity of the planet. Participants successfully completing the workshop will also enable students to see connections between sustainability principles and technical material in the course, and will guide students to apply sustainability concepts to engineering decisions in the topic area of the course.

Workshop Organizers:

Cliff Davidson, Rebecca Hardin, Susan Powers, Qiong Zhang

Description:

This session will provide an inclusive, nurturing environment to gather insights and ideas from the AEESP community to develop a strategy to strengthen and future-proof the discipline of environmental engineering and science over the next 10 years. The session will be interactive and engage the audience through breakout groups to gather ideas and input on 4 important general topical areas to include: (1) pillars and cross cutting areas essential to an environmental engineering / science department for research and training of students, (2) tactical approaches for influencing policy, funding, and engineering practice, (3) deliberate strategies for communication about environmental engineering and science (social media, earned media, paid media) and the role of advocacy and translational science in environmental engineering and science.

Workshop Organizers:

Kristopher McNeill, Heileen Hsu-Kim, David Cwiertny, and Alexandria Boehm

Description:

Extensive research is occurring rapidly within the field of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to help address the impacts of these harmful chemicals. However, communication across the broad range of stakeholders is often ineffective. In this workshop, participants will receive a concise overview of ongoing efforts to address PFAS impacts, featuring insights from key practicing stakeholders including regulatory agencies, public utility water providers, industry, and education. The introduction will focus on how research and partnerships are supporting these initiatives, while also identifying the challenges of applying research and data in real world practice. After the introduction, workshop attendees will be split into rotating breakout groups to address these themes:
– How is emerging data shaping the efforts of different stakeholders to address PFAS impacts? What are the current methods for communicating this data to them?
– What strategies can be implemented to improve communication of research with key stakeholders and enhance data-driven decision making in real world PFAS management and policy?
At the end, attendees will regroup to compile practical insights and actionable ideas that participants can apply in their respective roles to improve integration of PFAS research and data into management efforts. A formal summary will be written after the conference for distribution to attendees and if applicable, a peer reviewed journal may be written as well.

Workshop Organizers:

Ralph Mead and Rachylle Hart

Description:

This workshop will provide early-career faculty with an opportunity to network, to learn from their peers during pair-share and panel discussion, and to develop best practices for navigating the multi-faceted components of the tenure process. We welcome attendees from research 1 (R1), research 2 (R2), primarily undergraduate institutions and faculty who hold (tenure-track) teaching positions. The structure of the workshop will include: (i) a brief panel discussion led by 4 panelists about their pathway towards tenure; (ii) a sequence of 20-min think-pair-share activities where attendees have the opportunity to share their challenges, resources and best practices related to research, teaching, mentoring and service; and (iii) discussion with the panelists regarding infrastructure to share the information from the workshop with early career AEESP community members.

Workshop Organizers:

Jessica Ray, Carsten Prasse, and Christophe Olivares Martinez
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